Keeping Europe's Basic Research Aqencv on Track

摘要

There were a few times when Helga Nowotny considered throwing in the towel and abandoning the fledgling European Research Council (ERC) she'd helped create. The thought would typically arise when she couldn't bear the weight of the Brussels bureaucracy anymore. In 2007, for example, the ERC's scientific council, of which she was then vice-chair, wanted to fly several hundred young applicants for the first round of grants to Brussels for interviews. Weeks before the invitations were to go out, the European Commission's (EC's) legal service said no: E.U. rules did not allow payment of E.U. travel money to grant applicants. "We never saw these lawyers," Nowotny says. "We called them the secret legal service. It was maddening."