The European Research Council (ERC) received 7,710 applications in its Starting Grant call, which closed in October, up 60 percent from a year earlier. At the same time, the planned budget for the call fell from €705 million to €594 million. While 421 projects were selected for funding in the previous round, under current plans there would be enough money for approximately 373 grants next summer.

ERC grants are among the most prestigious research funding instruments and are also considered a mark of international recognition for scientific excellence. Starting Grants, for example, generally provide researchers with up to €1.5 million over five years to launch independent research projects or establish their own research groups.

However, eligibility for Starting Grants was expanded this year. Previously, researchers could apply between two and seven years after completing their doctorates, but for the 2027 call, applications were accepted immediately after doctoral graduation and for up to 10 years afterward.

According to Kristiina Tõnnisson, head of the Estonian Research Council (ETAg), such a low success rate raises questions for researchers about whether the time and money spent preparing applications are worth the investment.

"When we look at the system as a whole and consider how much time and energy is spent across Europe, there is a systemic problem. However, it is important to clarify that this is currently a preliminary budget and evaluations are underway. The final budget for the call could still increase," she explained.

Tõnnisson said Estonian researchers have been successful in securing prestigious grants, particularly considering Estonia's small population in the European context. The success rate for applications across all ERC grant categories under the current Horizon Europe research framework program has been approximately 7 percent. There are currently 17 active ERC-funded research projects in Estonia. She therefore encourages Estonian researchers to continue applying for ERC grants while also considering other European funding opportunities.

Mari Moora, vice rector for research at the University of Tartu and a former member of an ERC evaluation panel, also believes researchers with strong ideas should apply for Starting Grants. "If you have a good, original idea, please put it in writing and apply, despite the increase in the number of applications," she said.

According to Moora, the rise in application numbers has not been accompanied by an increase in their average scientific quality. For example, during the recently concluded Starting Grant evaluation round, she had to review significantly more applications than before that, in her assessment, may have been largely written by artificial intelligence. She believes AI is also a major factor behind the sharp increase in applications.

"The reason I would say that 60 percent was AI-generated text is that the material was very uninteresting, of poor quality and lacked original ideas. So my argument would be that a good, original idea presented in a well-written application has roughly the same chance of securing funding as in previous years," she explained from an evaluator's perspective.

Burden on evaluators

The workload faced by evaluators was already a concern for the ERC in the spring, when the council planned to extend the waiting period before applicants who received lower scores could apply again. However, following opposition from the research community, the ERC decided to retain the existing restrictions on resubmissions for Starting, Consolidator and Advanced Grants for the 2027 calls.

"The issue is broader because it affects not only the ERC, but the Estonian Research Council is facing the same challenge. The number of applications we receive is also constantly growing and we are trying to maintain quality. If the application success rate falls below 15 percent, something in the system needs to change. We are relatively close to that threshold and are already looking at the best approach and whether anything can be changed," Kristiina Tõnnisson said.

"At the Estonian Research Council, every project has three evaluators, which requires an enormous amount of resources," Tõnnisson added. She said research funding organizations are discussing, among other things, whether fewer expert reviews could be required for each application. They are also considering whether interviews in the final round contribute enough to the decision-making process to justify the time they take.

One option described by Tõnnisson would be to have AI rank applications and leave the bottom third of the rankings without expert review. Another possibility would be to introduce a lottery system: Evaluators would select the strongest applications, and funding recipients would then be chosen by lottery from among projects that are difficult to distinguish on merit. "All these different options are being considered by research funding organizations across Europe," Tõnnisson said.

To reduce the workload of evaluators, Mari Moora suggested checking whether applications contain accurate references and whether the cited sources actually exist before proceeding to a substantive evaluation. She had also encountered references to nonexistent sources in applications she reviewed.

However, Moora sees a risk in entrusting AI with evaluating the scientific merits of applications, warning that it could favor familiar ideas over novel ones. "AI can only evaluate what it knows. It might start discriminating against original ideas," she said.

Additional support for researchers

The Estonian Research Council already provides support to Estonian researchers who narrowly miss out on prestigious European grants. For example, researchers who reach the second evaluation stage of the ERC Starting Grant competition, receive an A grade but fail to secure funding can apply for bridge funding for up to 18 months.

According to Tõnnisson, increased competition has prompted ETAg to consider extending this support to researchers who receive a B grade. The agency is assessing how much the expansion would cost and whether it could be financed through the state budget or European Union structural funds. No decision has yet been made. "This still needs to be discussed at the political level and with the relevant stakeholders," Tõnnisson said.

She said bridge funding can determine whether a researcher disappointed by a funding decision remains in academia at all. "One researcher specifically told us that without the ERC bridge grant, they would definitely have left academia and taken another job," Tõnnisson said.

Moora believes a greater risk for Estonia than competition for Starting Grants is the possibility that access to European funding measures designed to strengthen research capacity could be reduced in the next budget period. She is also concerned about how much structural funding Estonia will allocate to research and higher education in the future.

"Research funding around the world is declining somewhat due to various political and social factors. Under current plans, research funding in Estonia is also set to decline. We still have a couple of years to change those plans, as no final decisions have been made, but the risk is there," Moora explained.

The Starting Grant call that closed in October still falls under the European Union's current budget period. EU member states are aiming to reach a political agreement on the next long-term budget by the end of 2026. If they succeed, the budget for the next Horizon Europe research program should become clear during 2027, along with more details about funding for the European Research Council. The new budget period begins January 1, 2028.

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