Munich

European researchers look set to enjoy a mobile future. The scientific borders of ten nations have been loosened to allow national grants to be spent in other countries.

The requirement for grants to be spent on research in the home nation was seen by many as a hindrance to mobility in Europe. And that in turn was cited as a major competitive disadvantage compared with the United States.

Now the heads of Europe's national research councils (collectively known as EUROHORCS) have hammered out an agreement to let researchers take their grants to an institute in a participating country without needing approval. The transfer can be made as long as the funded project is already under way, and its funding has at least six months left to run.

The agreement was signed on 22 October by the heads of 12 research councils from ten European nations, but it was made public only last week. Among those who signed were Britain's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and its Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council. The main national research agencies in France, Switzerland and Finland intend to join by the end of the year, and the remaining UK research councils are likely to follow suit, says Christoph Mühlberg, head of international affairs at Germany's research funding body the DFG, which currently chairs EUROHORCS.

The DFG already has a number of bilateral agreements for cross-border grant validity, for example with the EPSRC and the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). But Mühlberg says that the EUROHORCS agreement is a major step towards border-free research mobility throughout Europe.

Many researchers are enthusiastic about the agreement. “Being able to move without a lot of red tape, grant-wise, makes it infinitely easier to establish a scientific career abroad,” says Marcus Koch, an Austrian plant scientist who moved to the University of Heidelberg in Germany last year, shortly after the bilateral agreement was signed between the DFG and the FWF. “Bringing my Austrian grant money to Germany spared me so much time and trouble.”

Other countries participating in the EUROHORCS programme include Spain Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands.