Clash over EU support for research

Date: 10/09/1998

By Chris Johnstone

NATIONAL governments and the European Parliament are set on a collision course over the size and composition of EU support for research.

Austrian Research Minister Caspar Einem, speaking at a parliamentary hearing last week, dismissed the bid by MEPs to shape key aspects of the EU's next four-year research programme.

The Parliament has the ultimate sanction of throwing out the spending plans drawn up by EU governments. If it did so, the whole budget-setting process for the research programme would have to begin again from scratch.

The two sides are at loggerheads over how to define firms which will be able to bid for funds to the desirability of a mid-term review. "These differences are the biggest we have ever had," said British Socialist MEP Gordon Adam.

MEPs want a mid-term review so that the programme can be revised if necessary. They are also insisting that the European Commission's traditional definition of small businesses should be widened to give firms with up to 500 employees special access to research cash. National governments oppose both demands.

On the key issue of overall research funding, Einem invoked the "iron discipline" with which governments are having to manage their budgets and dismissed any likelihood of more money.

Union governments have set a 14-billion-ecu ceiling on the next round of research spending, but MEPs and the Commission are calling for a 16.3-billion-ecu fund.

MEPs have threatened to force a fresh start in talks on past research programmes, but have never actually done so. "That happened with the Third and Fourth Framework Programmes, but this time we will not fall into that trap," said German Christian Democrat, Godelieve Quisthoudt-Rowohl, who chairs the Parliament's research committee.

The two sides will try to settle their differences at a meeting on 29 September.

Council and EP are on a collision course over the size and competition of EU support for research.