‘Only’ 20 consolidator grants for the Netherlands

In total, the ERC will be handing out 657 million euros worth of consolidator grants, each worth 2 million euros on average. Of the 2,222 applications submitted, 321 were selected (14.4 percent). The two researchers from UU who are getting the grant are the mathematician Martijn Kool and the biochemist Tzviya Zeev Ben Mordehai.

Most grants are going to Germany (62), followed by the UK (45) and France (41). Israel (24), Spain (24) and Italy (21) also did better than the Netherlands this year, which ranked fourth back in 2021, 2020 and 2019.

Provisional
The ranking is provisional because the grants for UK researchers are still pending. The laureates will only be able to begin spending their grants once the Brits sign a treaty safeguarding their participation in the Horizon Europe programme.

As an alternative, they may take their research grant to an institution in a country that is affiliated with Horizon Europe. Should they choose to decline the grant, other researchers who initially missed out on it could be awarded after all. The same happened to some grants awarded in 2021, allowing the Netherlands to move up in the ranking to third place. Another contributing factor was the fact that Switzerland was no longer in the running.

Solidarity
The consolidator grants are comparable to the Dutch Research Council’s Vidi grants. This spring, Marcel Levi, chairperson of the Dutch Research Council, suggested that recipients should give back their Dutch grant if they also receive a European grant shortly after. “That would show solidarity with researchers who have missed out on a grant. In any event, we want to get that debate going.”

Some of the Dutch ERC grant winners were also the recipients of a Vidi grant, but that was several years ago.

Consolidator grants 2022

Source: ERC.