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Document on the Changes to the ERC evaluation procedures: Background and rationale (Sept 2025)

Published on | 4 weeks ago

Programmes ERC

In this document ERC President Maria Leptin explains the changes, the reasoning behind them, and how they are designed to strengthen the ERC evaluation process. The changes are in the following three areas:

  • the format of the scientific proposal, including the assessment of feasibility of the proposed work;
  • measures to make the workload of the evaluation panels more manageable;
  • a change in the eligibility windows for Starting and Consolidator Grants.

The changes are in force as of the ERC 2026 work programme, and in case of the third point as of the ERC 2027 work programme.

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Testimonial

image of Luciad - Geospatial software for mission-critical operations

Luciad - Geospatial software for mission-critical operations

Founded in 1999, Luciad serves clients in Europe, Asia and the Americas. Though it recently was acquired by Hexagon Geospatial, they kept an agile SME mindset. Thousands of end users work directly with Luciad’s geospatial applications, and major systems integrators (think Airbus Defense and Space, Lufthansa Systems, NATO, Thales…) incorporate its software in their own products.

NCP Flanders went to Leuven to interview Frederic Houbie, the Research Projects Manager at Luciad, about how he sees Horizon 2020. Luciad is a partner in the MARISA project, which is a collaborative RIA project submitted to an ICT call topic