How can Europe produce medical research that will best increase its citizens’ health and its countries’ wealth? This debate will run on and on, of course, but a new white paper from the European Medical Research Councils (EMRC) provides important evidence on funding and conducting effective, relevant, and world beating research (box 1).1 Summing up the white paper in Frankfurt last month, Professor Liselotte Højgaard, EMRC chair, quoted British physiologist Ernest Starling’s advice to the British Research Council in the 1920s, “get the best of men, give them the equipment you can afford, and leave them alone.”

This white paper is one of several responses to last year’s green paper from the European Commission, which contained proposals on how to overcome the fragmentation of research activities, programmes, and policies across Europe.2 The EMRC’s response is a pragmatic and readable document that pulls together evidence on whether Europe is finding the best researchers and whether it is spending enough on research …