Putting excellence first: why and how the ERC experience matters

In only five years the newly established European Research Council, ERC, has transformed the research landscape of Europe beyond recognition and expectation. Based on the simple objective to fund individual researchers and their teams in a genuine bottom-up approach without thematic priorities and based on the sole selection criteria of "scientific excellence" the ERC has provided generous funding for five years to approximately 3.000 Principal Investigators. The presentation will look at the difficulties which were encountered when setting up the ERC and at the goals achieved and will also provide an outlook at the challenges ahead