Why are UK universities "disproportionately successful at winning EU-awarded research grants"? I read on Wikipedia:


  UK universities rely on the EU for around 16% of their total research funding, and are disproportionately successful at winning EU-awarded research grants.


Why are UK universities "disproportionately successful at winning EU-awarded research grants"?
Universities in the UK (and universities in Northern Europe in general) are just better on average, with better infrastructure, better English skills, the means to hire better people, attract better students and in the end to write better grants (that might or might not be written by professional grant-writers). These are Framework programme grants for which there is Europe-wide competition.

This isn't entirely fair, that's why universities/research projects in poorer European regions are funded by the EU using more localized grants, as part of the European Structure funds. Usually these grants are not open to Europe-wide competition, and the UK can't win them all. 

Another comment on how "disproportionally successful" could be counted. If they just counted #grants-with-UK-participants / #grants the UK would come out ahead because of its large population (the same for Germany). Almost all grants will have UK / German groups involved, as it's hard to get 10 research groups &amp; companies together without taking one from the UK (or Germany).