01/07/2011 (Agence Europe) - Damien Abad. French MEP Damien Abad (Nouveau Centre, EPP) has voiced some reservation about the funding of certain large-scale projects, especially the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) and International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) projects. He said the Commission is proposing to finance the projects outside the European budget. Abad understands and accepts the argument that this is not flexible especially for raising additional funding. However, he continued, the Commission must better define how it plans to implement such measures and ensure permanent funding for research programmes. (G.B./transl.jl)