THE USE OF THE ERA-CHAIR SCHEME AS A PROMOTION TOOL OF RESEARCH AND ACADEMIC DEVELOPMENT IN EU LESS-FAVORED REGIONS: FACTS, PROS AND CONS

According to a statement in 2013 by Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, Commissioner then for Research, Innovation and Science: ‘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. 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. This is the reason why we are launching the ERA Chairs initiative.’ The purpose of this initiative is to help close the research and innovation divide in Europe and widen participation in the European Research Area. The ERA Chairs programme will support universities and other eligible organizations in achieving the level of research excellence required to be competitive at international level on a sustainable basis. The first phase of the ERA-Chair pilot call was launched in 30th of May 2013, where participants had to submit their proposals which were then evaluated by the Commission over the summer of 2013 and then identified and selected the institutions in which an ERA Chair was to be established. This was done through a competitive process. Eligible institutions were any university or other research organization with a non-profit mission (as defined in the FP7 rules for participation) located in a convergence/less-developed region (as defined by the General Regulation of the Structural Funds for the present programming period and similar characteristics for associated countries). Eligible Member states include all those that joined the EU after 2004 plus Portugal and Luxembourg, as well as eight of the non-EU countries associated to Horizon 2020. The first grant agreements were to be signed in December 2013 while in the second phase, starting in 2014, the successful research organizations had to publish the job vacancy and select the ERA Chair holder through an open and transparent recruitment process, a guiding principle under the European Research Area that was considered to boost excellence. The candidates could be nationals of any country in the world. This first Horizon 2020 call on ERA Chairs had a budget of €33.6 million, following a pilot call under the 7th research framework programme (IP/14/125).The financial contribution per proposal was up to a maximum of €2.4 million for a period of up to five years with a maximum of one grant to be awarded per country, something that changed later in the 2015 call. According to the Commission if the pilot call was successful, then the Commission would propose to enlarge the programme significantly under Horizon 2020. This work presented here shows results from the University of Mons located in the Walloon Region of Belgium by the intermediate of Research Institute for Energy that obtained an ERA Chair grant in 2014 under the FP7-RESIZED project entitled in the field ‘Net Zero Energy Efficiency on City Districts, NZED’. At the same time these 3 ½ years of operation of the new research Unit and concept are compared by the author, who is also the current ERA-CHAIR Holder at UMONS, with existing similar related national/international schemes (calls and grants) as well as with the new funded ERA Chair schemes while presenting a more detailed view of the possible necessity and its impact progress of such a scheme to the grant hosted institution as well as EU education/research field while analyzing the pros and cons.