A task force set up to help overhaul the governance of the European Research Council – the first pan-European, investigator-driven research agency – will meet for the first time on 14 December.

The ERC, which will have an annual budget of €1.8 billion (US$2.4 billion) by 2013, has been blighted by European Union bureaucracy since its establishment three years ago. (See Nature’s exposé of the ERC’s problems here.) The task force, which will be composed of members of the ERC scientific council and the European Commission, has the job of coming up with new arrangements for the ERC to allow it to operate more independently. (See Nature’s interview with Helga Nowotny, president of the ERC scientific council, here.)

But as the ERC announced the task force on 16 November, it also took an eleventh-hour decision to hold off appointing a new manager. The new position was to combine that of the secretary-general with that of the director of the executive agency that is in charge of the ERC’s administration. The aim of the merger was to ensure that the role of managing the ERC’s administration was put in the hands of someone with a strong scientific background who understands the needs and challenges of basic science.

In the 16 November announcement, the ERC says it wants to maintain its status quo until the task force delivers its recommendations. But it is not clear why the position was scrapped at the last minute. In a letter from the Commission dated 29 October, Ramon Marimon, an economist at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, and an applicant for the job, was told that the position had been closed without appointing anyone. Marimon was due to be interviewed in the final stages of the job appointment process on 16 September but was informed the day before the interview was due to take place that it was cancelled.

Marimon has put all his correspondence with the Commission regarding the job on his website.

He writes his concern that creating a task force rather than appointing a new manager is a “very risky path for the future governance of the ERC”.

But in a response to Nature, Nowotny says the task force is a “big step forward” for the ERC and an “extremely positive” development.