Final push for research funding deal

Date: 30/07/1998

By Chris Johnstone

AUSTRIA's music-loving Science and Transport Minister Caspar Einem faces the difficult problem of hitting the right note on the level of European support for research over the next four years.

Starting early in September, Einem will chair a round of meetings at which he will try to achieve a compromise between fellow ministers' refusal to see EU research funding exceed 14 billion ecu and the European Commission and Parliament's equally firm insistence that it should not fall below 16.3 billion ecu.

That compares with 13.2 billion ecu allocated to R&D under the current Fourth Framework Programme, which ends this year.

Commission officials and MEPs complain that the ministers' offer barely keeps up with inflation and the principle of increasing EU research spending in line with overall economic growth. They point to the massive sums being ploughed into research by the US government as a warning to Europe that it could, and should, do better.

In the posturing which traditionally precedes such conciliation talks, no one seems to be giving much ground. In fact, the Parliament has added quite an extensive wish list to its cash demands which will not make it any easier to get agreement.

However, Einem is making a concerted effort to bang heads together. He will meet MEPs on the research committee on 3 September and the full Parliament at its plenary session beginning on 16 September, before the scheduled start of conciliation talks two weeks later.

Two sets of informal talks between the Parliament, Council of Ministers and Commission have already been held this month. But sources say the most recent, last week, merely showed how firmly entrenched the three sides' positions remain.

Although the difference (just over 2 billion ecu) is a small amount in the context of an annual Commission budget of around 85 billion ecu, and EU cash is a small drop in the ocean of Europe's total research funding (accounting for an estimated 5%), a number of Union governments have picked on the research budget to make a point.

Germany is taking a particularly hawkish line. Bonn's research budget fell this year compared with last and although it is due to rise again next year, the federal government sees no reason to support increased European spending - at least not until the Commission shows some signs of using the cash better.

It complains the Commission has failed to react sufficiently to a highly critical report on EU research funding by Belgian business doyen and former Commissioner Etienne Davignon.

He voiced the obvious, but previously unstated opinion that the topics chosen for a great deal of EU research were decided by horse-trading between governments, with the result that the end-product was a scientific dog's dinner.

Germany's stance could change after federal elections on 27 September, regardless of who wins, according to experts following the research debate.

However, the EU's other big power brokers, France and the UK, are lined up alongside Germany in the budget battle. The new Dutch coalition government has also taken a tough line on Union spending, and Sweden has come out as a hawk.

"They do not think they get much out of the programmes and do not think that much of the research being done. That holds good for the government as well as the scientists," said one source.

Spain has taken a different tack, linking the question of research spending to arguments about the amount it receives from the overall EU budget, which it feels is under threat.

The Fifth Framework Research and Development Programme uncomfortably straddles the end of 1999, the date when the Commission's current financial perspectives end and its future austerity, ahead of Union enlargement, begins.

The amount of money allocated to its second half is thus being seen as an important test for the EU's future housekeeping.

Although national governments took a united stand on the 14 billion ecu budget for research back in February, some observers say cracks could begin to appear in the Council's front, especially if the Commission starts threatening some of the Union's seven research institutes.

Research Commissioner Edith Cresson has already warned that one of these sites may have to close if no extra cash is forthcoming. Italy, which hosts four of the seven research centres at Ispra, is seen as being particularly vulnerable to this argument, especially as it starts out with a less penny-pinching attitude to EU research than some of its partners.

The Commission has tried to answer some of the criticism by cutting the number of programmes, calling on outside advisers to monitor them and promising better management in future.

At the same time, however, Cresson is fighting her corner, warning that ongoing Commission studies into the effectiveness of national research programmes will provide some nasty surprises for some of them.

"The administrative costs which the Commission is reproached with are often lower than those of some national institutions. If bench-marking was carried out, I can tell you it would be rather favourable to the Commission," she said.

On the content of the Fifth Framework Programme, there is less separating the three sides.

However, ministers have been reluctant to discuss the details of programmes before the overall budget is settled. They have only agreed between themselves on those for the information society, the nuclear sector, innovation and small- and medium-sized businesses.

With tenders supposed to go out for research projects by the end of the year, Einem has little time to get the squabbling parties to settle their differences.

Major feature.