Race against time for draft research plan

Date: 03/07/1997

FEARS are growing that the European Commission is behind schedule in firming up long-awaited details of the EU's new research and development programme.

Member state officials have expressed concern that the Commission's draft proposal for the Fifth Framework Programme contains very little concrete information and is vague and unfocused.

“We need reassurance that there is internal logic in what the Commission has proposed,” said one.

Officials in the Directorate-General for science, research and development (DGXII) have been racing against time to produce working documents fleshing out specific aspects of the programme in time for them to be circulated to other Commission departments this month.

Some member states believe this work should have been done before the Commission adopted its draft proposal in April. They are also unhappy that clear objectives were not set out in the original document.

When the Commission unveiled its draft proposal for the Fifth Framework Programme, it stressed that - in contrast with previous programmes - it would be streamlined and focused. But some experts question this.

“This work should have been done six months ago. We are losing unnecessary time. If the Commission does not bring this work forward, the programme will not be ready for 1999,” warned one EU diplomat.

Given the current delays, Luxembourg - which took over the EU presidency this week - will be hard-pressed to get a ministerial agreement on the new programme before the end of the year.

“We are at the beginning of a long road. It is going to be very difficult,” said a Dutch official. “It is true that the key actions are not very well worked out.”

But a Commission official insisted work on the programme was “going well”, adding: “We are within our plan from last year.”