More than 120 ERC grantees blame fragmented funding for Europe's lab-to-market gap

A Policy Forum in Science is an argued position, and this one names its inputs: the members' direct experience, combined with economic analysis of European funding programs ^[3]. From those inputs the authors conclude that persistent institutional and funding barriers keep Europe's scientific excellence from producing its full economic and societal impact ^[9]. They take the quality of the science as given and place the losses after the discovery.

The friction they describe is administrative. Under Horizon Europe, the EU's research program for 2021-2027, an ERC Proof of Concept grant pays a researcher to explore a practical application. Technology development and business growth belong to European Innovation Council programs, and the authors say work with commercial potential can stall in the administrative gaps between the two ^[4]. Moving Proof of Concept grants under EIC governance would, they argue, reduce repeated evaluations, simplify transitions and make support more predictable for researchers and investors ^[5].

"Europe has extraordinary scientific talent, but too often we lose momentum between discovery and application," said Dario Polli, a professor at Politecnico di Milano and one of the lead authors ^[10].

The authors do not estimate how many Proof of Concept projects stall between the two councils or how many more a merger would bring to market. For now the causal claim rests on the members' experience and their program analysis ^[3].

The authors want more support for early-stage, high-risk work. They also want resources shifted toward breakthrough innovation and more authority for independent program managers to steer promising projects ^[7]. Their benchmark is American: they rate the EIC's program-management capacity as limited next to advanced research agencies in the United States ^[6].

Giorgio Presidente, a researcher at the Institute for European Policymaking at Bocconi University, framed the problem around industry. "Europe is caught in a middle-technology trap: we specialize in mature industries such as automotive and industrial machinery, while frontier sectors such as AI and biotechnology remain too small," he said ^[11]. His diagnosis concerns which industries Europe has, a separate variable from how grants pass between councils. He links the two, saying Europe "must rebuild the pipeline from scientific discovery to market" ^[11].

Two further proposals concern the application itself and who pays. Applications would be shorter and judged more directly on the idea and its potential use ^[8]. National funding agencies would make multiyear commitments to excellent projects that pass European evaluation but cannot be financed from the EU budget, extending the approach already used through the Seal of Excellence ^[13].

The signatories have been organized since 2023 as the INPACT! network ^[2]. In Italy, contributors came from the Italian Institute of Technology, IMT Lucca, Politecnico di Torino, Politecnico di Milano and Bocconi ^[12]. They know the handoff between councils from the inside and are also among the researchers the reforms would fund. I think the diagnosis is plausible. Of the proposals, the Proof of Concept merger is the easiest to test, because it changes one handoff inside an existing program ^[5].