The European Commission is testing a scheme that will set up European Union-funded research chairs at universities in less-developed regions of Europe. The aim is to build research capacity around these new professors, both in the selected universities and their home regions. 

The €12 million pilot project will establish five European Research Area (ERA) chairs, with no more than one in each eligible country. If the scheme is judged successful, a substantial expansion is envisaged under Horizon 2020, the EU’s research and innovation programme for 2014-20. The ambition is to create 150-170 new chairs, resources permitting.

The scheme is being tested in the context of changes to EU support for the regions. Initiatives to build regional research capacity will largely disappear from Horizon 2020, to be picked up by structural funds under the policy of ‘smart specialisation’. The residual role of the ERA chairs is to ensure diversity in the competition for research grants.

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“Many regions in Europe are underperforming on research, both in terms of their overall output and in terms of their participation in EU-funded research,” said Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, the European commissioner for research, innovation and science, when she announced the pilot project in December. “I want to make sure that no one is left behind, not out of charity but because it makes good research sense and economic sense to have wide participation in our programmes.”

The ERA chair grant, worth up to €2.4m over five years, will cover the professor’s salary and other costs such as putting together a team, but not the direct costs of research. The person recruited must have high academic standing, but also a record of successfully attracting funding.

Raising standards

At a meeting for the sector in January, Commission officials stressed that the ERA chairs are intended as a means of transforming universities, not simply providing funds to buy in star researchers. Bids need to show that the university has a strategy for using the appointment to improve its overall performance in a particular discipline and to extend that effect at the regional level.

The Commission also wants to see chairs create an ‘ERA culture’ at the institution. This includes transparent and merit-based recruitment, gender equality and external peer assessments for career development. The professor, who can come from anywhere in the world, must also be recruited through open competition.

Each strategy must also develop innovative, well-structured doctoral training at the university. “This is an extremely important area where careful consideration of change could be planned,” says Katherine Isaacs, an academic from the University of Pisa with experience of university restructuring, who spoke at the January meeting.

To apply, universities need to be in one of the convergence or outermost regions, as defined by the structural funds. This covers most of central and eastern Europe, plus parts of Germany, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece and the UK. Some eligible universities will therefore be relatively well-organised and successful, not least in bidding for EU funds.

Isaacs says that these may not be the most effective places to put ERA chairs. “I think it would be most meaningful for an institution with reasonable quality but in an outlying place, not one of the central, national institutions of the countries targeted.” However, she acknowledges a counter-argument that they could also benefit. “These people already have a great number of human and intellectual resources, and it’s a matter of modernising what they are doing.”

The regions have given the scheme a qualified welcome. Richard Tuffs, director of the European Regions Research and Innovation Network, is happy to see support for the weakest, but wonders about the rest. Some of his network’s member regions will have eligible universities, but many will not. “We want to see all regions moving up the ladder progressively. It does not have to be just the poorest regions.”

Ian Mundell is a freelance journalist based in Brussels.