ERA: an ailing emperor's new clothes

If the European Research Area Board (ERAB) is 'humbled' by how small Europe is, perhaps Australia can learn something from the Board's response? The Board recommends that if the European Research Area is to deliver excellence then half of the European Commission's funding for research will be committed to frontier, high-risk research by 2030, and a further third of funding will be aimed at research addressing grand societal challenges in areas such as climate change, ageing populations and sustainability. To support the development of investigator driven frontier, high-risk research the European Research Council (ERC) was established in 2007 as part of the European Commission's 7th Framework Program (FP). It has an annual budget expected to reach 1.7 billion Euros by 2013 and its President Helga Nowotny wants to have this doubled in FP 8. The ERC developed the term 'frontier research' to describe activities directed towards fundamental advances at and beyond the 'frontier' of knowledge. It is this type of research that the ERC believes will help deliver 'new and unpredictable scientific and technological discoveries - the kind that can form the basis of new industries, markets, and broader social innovations of the future'. Grand societal challenges, on the other hand, will require much more focussed research.