Fears for EU research cash

Plans to double European Union spending on research and set up a European Research Council could be killed by budget cuts being considered after the French and Dutch voted against the European constitution.

A meeting of EU heads of government on Thursday and Friday next week will consider a proposal for a 40 per cent cut in the European Commission's spending on growth and competitiveness, the area of EU spending that includes research.

Such a cut would inflict severe damage on the proposed Seventh Framework Programme for research.

FP7 is due to run from 2007 to 2013, and was intended to be more than twice the size of the sixth programme, spending about €10 billion (£7 billion) a year.

Discussions on the future budget were held this week at a meeting of EU finance ministers in Luxembourg and will continue this weekend at a conclave of foreign and finance ministers.

But it is unlikely that these meetings, or next week's gathering of heads of government, will solve the budget problem, which will remain a major issue during the UK presidency of the EU from July to December this year.

Malcolm Harbour, Conservative MEP for the West Midlands, said: "It is apparent that there will be a period of reflection about the constitution and that the budget will come to centre stage instead.

"But it is now even more important politically for the EU to get agreement on the budget because of all the problems with the constitution."

He said that any cuts to the size of FP7 would be most likely to affect new areas of spending such as the European Research Council. The ERC is intended as a rival to the US National Science Foundation and would fund pure research. Scientists from across Europe would compete for its grants.

Existing applied research would be under less of a threat.

But Mr Harbour added that although the full budget that the Commission had requested may well not be approved, there was political support for more research spending, especially among newer EU member states.

"All national budgets are under pressure and there is demand for a tighter grip on spending, but MEPs and others think that European research has been a success and would like to see it grow."

Glyn Ford, Labour MEP for Southwest England, said that a single large project, the ITER fusion reactor, could use a quarter of EU research spending. The project is being set up by an international treaty involving the EU, Japan, the US and others, which is under negotiation.