In the quest of research funding bodies to get ever more impact (whatever that means) with ever less money, the French National Research Agency (ANR) has recently made an interesting move: introducing a grant called MRSEI for, as its name indicates, "building European and international scientific networks".
The avowed aim of this grant is to "facilitate the access of French researchers to European and international financing". This grant is therefore not directly for doing research, it is also not a kind of seed funding for starting a project in the hope of later obtaining more funding. It is a grant for obtaining larger grants.
