Scheme to channel farm money into R&D likely to fail

Date: 13/06/1996

RESEARCH Commissioner Edith Cresson's plan to channel 700 million ecu of under-used cash from the agricultural budget into the Union's research and development (R&D) coffers looks doomed to failure.

As the Florence summit approaches on 21-22 June, the chances of victory for the Commission are slight in its fight with finance ministers who insist that unused resources should be returned to them.

A meeting of research ministers originally planned for 19 June has been postponed until 26 June and will only take place if the summit concludes that extra money can be found for research.

The argument stretches back to late last year when Cresson requested that a 700-million-ecu reserve in the research budget be released to help fund a series of priority projects.

When the Fourth Framework Programme for R&D was agreed in December 1994, 12.3 billion ecu was earmarked for 1994-98, plus a reserve. Since this decision, annual Commission requests for extra money on specific projects have been agreed and the notional reserve has been spent. This means that Cresson has had to turn elsewhere for the money, which must be freed by 30 June 1996 or lost.

Cresson has adopted a targeted approach to R&D, setting up six task forces to develop the car, aircraft and train of tomorrow, vaccines against viral diseases, educational software and efficient combinations of transport means (intermodality). She has called for the extra money to be channelled exclusively into these projects. This, however, requires the unanimous backing of member states and, as if this were not difficult enough, the Commission wants the money to come from a revision of the EU's financial perspectives.

Even before the mad cow crisis - which has so far seen 1.5 billion ecu siphoned out of the agricultural budget - the idea of reallocation had received short shrift from six finance ministers led by the French, German, British and Dutch.

Although they rejected the idea, ministers wanted the backing of their political masters and kicked the debate upstairs for discussion at the summit. But prime ministers are also unlikely to be sympathetic to the plan while they are pursuing every avenue to increase state revenues.

“One way or another, it looks highly unlikely that there will be any changes to the financial perspectives,” said a diplomat. “Quite a few member states are not keen on raising the ceilings.”

This will come as a major disappointment to the high-technology industry.

“If the money is not there then that is a problem for the task forces and for us,” admitted Jean Heymans, secretary-general of the European Committee for the Cooperation of the Machine Tool Industry.

Failure to win the extra money would be a disappointment for Cresson, who sees research as a weapon in international competition, pointing out that Europe is lagging behind the US and Japan in the race to develop cutting-edge products for the next century.