Frequently asked questions

The ERC Synergy Grant (SyG) funding scheme imposes very little eligibility constraints on applicants. A PhD degree is not formally required. However, please be aware that this is an extremely competitive call.

More information about the ERC-2019-SYG Grant Call and eligibility requirements is available in the ERC Work Programme 2019 and Information for Applicants to the Synergy Grant 2019 Call.

According to the conditions of the ERC Consolidator Grant 2019 call, the applicant must choose a primary evaluation panel and may also indicate a secondary evaluation panel. He/she should indicate when he/she believes that his/her proposal is of a cross-panel or cross-domain nature.

In most cases the proposal will be evaluated by the primary panel indicated by the applicant. However, if the scope of a proposal does not correspond to the expertise of the primary panel, the proposal can be reallocated to another panel, if the panel chairs of the original and the new panel unanimously agree to do so.

For more information on the ERC-2019-CoG call, please refer to the ERC Work Programme 2019.

For the ERC Consolidator Grant 2019, Step 1 of the peer review evaluation process is based only on the extended synopsis, the Principal Investigator's CV and the track record (Part B1 only), and peer reviewers do not have access to the full scientific proposal. At Step 2, the peer reviewers base their assessment on the complete versions of the retained proposals - Part B1 and Part B2 (the scientific proposal). Please note that experts do not have access to any supporting documentation during the evaluation.

For more information on the evaluation process, please refer to the ERC Work Programme 2019 (section 'Evaluation procedure and criteria').

For the ERC Consolidator Grant 2019, the applicant must choose a primary evaluation panel and may also indicate a secondary evaluation panel. He/she should indicate when he/she believes that his/her proposal is of a cross-panel or cross-domain nature.

Further explanations can be found in the Information for the applicants to the Starting and Consolidator Grant 2019 Calls. The primary panel structure and description is also described in Annex 1 of the ERC Work Programme 2019.

The CVs of individual team members should not be included. Although it is not mandatory to provide the names of individual team members, the proposal should describe the composition of the team that will carry out the proposed activities.

Further explanations can be found in the Information for the applicants to the Starting and Consolidator Grant 2019 Calls.

During each step of the ERC Consolidator Grant 2019 evaluation, the two main elements of the proposal (Principal Investigator and research project) will be evaluated and rated. At the end of each evaluation step, the proposals will be ranked by the panels on the basis of the marks they have received and on the panels' overall appreciation of each proposal's strengths and weaknesses.

At the end of Step 1 of the evaluation, on the basis of the assessment of Part B1 of the proposal, applicants will be informed that their proposal:

1. is of sufficient quality to pass to Step 2 of the evaluation;
2. is of high quality but not sufficient to pass to Step 2 of the evaluation; or
3. is not of sufficient quality to pass to Step 2 of the evaluation.

At the end of Step 2 of the evaluation, on the basis of the assessment of the full proposal, applicants will be informed that their proposal either:

1. fully meets the ERC's excellence criterion and is recommended for funding if sufficient funds are available; or
2. meets some but not all elements of the ERC's excellence criterion and will not be funded.

More information on the results of the peer review evaluation can be found at section 3.7 of the ERC Rules for Submission and Evaluation.

Applicants may also be subject to restrictions on submitting proposals to future ERC calls based on the outcome of the evaluation. Applicants will need to check the restrictions in place for each call (for 2019 calls, see restrictions on submission of proposals under 'Eligibility criteria' of the ERC Work Programme 2019).

In addition, once the evaluation of their proposal has been completed, applicants will receive an evaluation report which will include the ranking range of their proposal out of the proposals evaluated by the panel, the panel comment explaining the panel decision as well as the individual comments given by each reviewer (for more details, see Information for applicants to the Starting and Consolidator Grant 2019 Calls).

More information on the evaluation procedure can also be found in the ERC Work Programme 2019 section relevant to the call.

The limit of 15 pages applicable to the ‘Scientific Proposal’ as per the ERC Work Programme 2020 will apply to Part B2 and the descriptive part of the resources (Section C. Resources).The text box for Section C. Resources has a maximum length of 8000 characters (including spaces). Please note that 4000 characters, font size 11, single line spacing, correspond to one A4 text page.Therefore if Section C. Resources was 8000 characters equal to 2 pages, the remaining page limit for Part B2 would be 13 pages.The budget table itself does not count towards the page limit.

According to the conditions of the ERC 2020 Consolidator Grant (ERC-2020-COG) call, the budget section contains the table of the proposal budget including the total estimated project costs and the requested EU contribution for the project. The budget table will provide automatically one budget line per beneficiary. The budget is subdivided in personnel costs, travel, equipment, consumables, publications (including any costs related to Open Access), other additional direct costs, internally invoiced goods and services, costs of in kind contributions not used on the beneficiary’s premises, and any envisaged subcontracting costs. The costs should be given in whole Euros (not kilo Euros). Please carefully check all values of the budget table. Please note that while the total estimated eligible costs in the budget table are calculated automatically, the requested EU contribution has to be filled manually.

We recommend applicants to describe and justify the requested resources heading by heading using the terminology of the budget table. If additional funding is requested for the project, describe and justify the request clearly under a separate dedicated heading. Bear in mind that unjustified budgets will be reduced.

More explanation can be found in the guidelines of the Information for Applicants document to the Starting and Consolidator 2020 Grants (pages 19-20).

The budget table and description of resources are part of the online submission form Part A (Section 3 - Budget). The description and justification of the resources should be provided in the text box (Section C. Resources) under the budget table.

The budget section contains the proposal budget including the ‘total eligible project costs’ and the ‘Requested EU contribution’ for the project. The budget is subdivided in personnel costs, travel and subsistence, equipment, consumables, publications (including any costs related to Open Access), other additional direct costs, internally invoiced goods and services, and any envisaged subcontracting costs. The budget table will provide automatically one budget line per beneficiary. Applicants should indicate the costs for each cost category as accurately as possible using only Euro integers.

In case the ‘total eligible costs’ differ from the ‘requested EU contribution’, specify in the Resources section what exactly is funded from other sources.

Applicants should carefully check all the values of the budget table. The ‘Total eligible costs’ of the project will be automatically calculated based on the figures inserted in the individual columns. The ‘Requested EU contribution’ has to be filled in manually. Please make sure to update the ‘Requested EU contribution’ if updates are made in any of the cost categories.

In the Section C. Resources, the applicant should state and fully justify the amount of funding considered necessary to fulfil the objectives for the duration of the project. The project cost estimation should be as accurate as possible. The evaluation panels assess the estimated costs carefully; unjustified budgets will be consequently reduced.

Applicants should:

• Take into account the dedicated working time to run the project when estimating personnel costs. They should describe the size and nature of the team, indicating, where appropriate, the key team members and their roles. The participation of team members engaged by other host institutions should be justified and in relation to the additional financial cost this may impose.
• Include a short technical description of any requested equipment, why they need it and how much they plan to use it for the project.
• Include a realistic estimation of the costs for Open Access to project outputs. Costs for providing immediate Open Access to publications (article processing charges/book processing charges) are eligible if they are incurred during the lifetime of the project.
• Specify the cost items covered by 'Other personnel costs' category as well as ‘Other additional direct costs' category if applicable.
• As regards ‘Internally invoiced goods and services’, costs for host institution invoices and invoices for other entities should be included under this heading e.g. access to large facilities, access to other services that are charged as unit costs.
• Specify the requested amount for additional funding if applicable (all items MUST be included in the overall budget table under the relevant individual columns) and they should justify the request.
• Specify if they will use third parties giving in-kind contributions to the action (if applicable).

More explanation can be found in the ERC Information for Applicants.

The ERC Synergy Grant (SyG) funding scheme imposes few eligibility constraints on applicants. There are no constraints regarding academic degrees, thus a PhD degree is not formally required. However, please be aware that this is an extremely competitive call. Although the Synergy group is evaluated as a whole, each applicant Principal Investigator ideally should be competitive at a level corresponding to their career stage in an individual grant. More information about the ERC-2022-SyG call and eligibility requirements is available in the ERC Work Programme 2022 and Information for Applicants to the Synergy Grant 2022 Call.