After a thorough assessment of the ongoing projects funded through the pilot calls in 2012 and 2013, the ERC Scientific Council decided to reinstate the Synergy Grant funding scheme in 2018.

The objective of the Synergy Grant is to enable a small group of principal investigators and their teams to bring together complementary skills, knowledge and resources in new ways, in order to jointly address research problems in free-spirited ways, potentially leading to major breakthroughs that scientists would not be able to achieve working alone. The funding scheme intends to promote substantial advances at the frontiers of knowledge, and to encourage new productive lines of enquiry and new methods and techniques, including unconventional approaches and investigations at the crossroads of established disciplines.

In 2012 and 2013, the ERC opened two competitions for Synergy Grants on a pilot basis. An assessment of the 24 projects funded in these calls, including visits to the research teams by Scientific Council members, came to the conclusion that such grants would be a valuable addition to the main ERC funding schemes - part of the EU's Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for Research and Innovation - which are targeted at individual researchers.

Full ERC press release