The EU’s European Research Counsel (ERC) was established to solicit the best research, efficiently award domain-specific grants based upon merit, and remain a responsible custodian of taxpayer funds. However, studies such as that written by Mom and Van den Besselaar criticize the body as being a biased, slow, bureaucratic, and unconnected board of technocrats that appears wasteful or ineffective.

Inspired by today’s unnecessarily impenetrable research submission process, our deviation is EU’s equally sclerotic attempt to disrupt itself. The submissions received for this call to action hold up a mirror to both the EU and its critics’ claims of being inefficient, ineffectual, unfair, undemocratic, and slow. Since no decision-making body is immune to the reality of tradeoffs, how should decisions be made?