[jarvist]

Why would you want control? That means more bureaucracy you need to do yourself.

In the UK (and I believe everywhere with a well functioning research culture), the 'Haldane principle' means that research funding is decided by researchers (not politicians / the civil service). https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmselect/cmdi...

Funding UK science via the ERC, means you are making use of the network effects for peer review & processes. So the individual funding applications are being reviewed to a higher standard, and better decisions are made about what science to fund.

[nvm0n2]

What the ERC does is controlled by the Commission like everything else in Europe, it's not independent regardless of what it claims. The people making the decisions on what to fund are directly selected by the Commission itself.

So the EU's institutional agenda is indivisible from what gets funded via the ERC. That's why they fund stuff like research into disinformation, which the EU defines as more or less anything that goes against its own narratives or agendas, or cultural stereotyping:

https://erc.europa.eu/projects-statistics/stories/why-people...

https://www.adinaakbik.eu/projects/2702-eurotypes

Cultural stereotypes are often present in the political and media discourse on European Union (EU) governance: e.g., the lazy Greeks, the tax-dodging Italians, the stingy Dutch, and so forth. Especially when stereotypes are negative, they create conflict between national governments, fuel Euroscepticism among voters, and can lead to the discrimination of citizens or Member States.

To address this gap, EUROTYPES sets out to investigate how cultural stereotypes impact cooperation and effectiveness in contemporary EU governance.