Brussels, 11/10/2012 (Agence Europe) - Late on Wednesday 10 October in Luxembourg, negotiations between European ministers responsible for research finally came to an end with a partial agreement on the rules for participating in the “Horizon 2020” framework programme. The compromise adopted during this Competitiveness Council meeting can be summarised in the 100/25 formula that to large extent corresponds to the European Commission and member states' position, which was more in favour of far-reaching simplification of the 2014-2020 framework programme.
The Cypriot minister, Stavros Malas, who chaired the Council work, declared during the final press conference that the discussions had been very “laborious” but the agreement obtained in the form of a partial general orientation was an important milestone for this Council and was acceptable to the majority of member states. He declared that they could now genuinely talk about the “enormous achievement to arrive at a consensus on the rules for participation in Horizon 2020… because we were able to set aside some national considerations that really hindered the debates over the last few months”.
The direct costs of the research projects that will be subsidised by the EU are therefore expected to receive 100% reimbursement. This issue was never questioned although a forfeit system has been chosen for indirect costs, which corresponds to 25% of the total amount of direct costs. The idea of a reimbursement option for total indirect costs (or “real costs”) was withdrawn. Germany, Spain and Belgium, however, managed to thrash out a compromise on this point, which will leave the possibility (which still needs to be examined by the Commission) to transfer part of the indirect costs to direct costs, which are subsequently 100% reimbursable for major infrastructure research projects (non-profit making).
According to Malas, however, the subject of payments for researchers “really divided the Council”. The bonus system was maintained, which is supposed to partly compensate the remuneration differences existing between researchers in member states. A group of 12 member states, the most in favour of such a solution, succeeded in getting a ceiling adopted of €8,000 instead of €5,000 per person, per year. Cohesion in this group, however, did not last throughout the entire talks. Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Lithuania rejected the final agreement. The Netherlands also rejected it because they thought the definition of direct costs was not precise enough.
According to one European source, the persistence of the Cypriot presidency and certain states to reach a compromise during this meeting (despite several votes that had not achieved any major results) was mainly motivated by a desire to not leave this initiative on this dossier to the European Parliament. In November, it will be up to be industry, research and energy Parliamentary committee to give its verdict on rules for participation. If the Council does not reach an agreement in the here and now, it will only have the opportunity in December when it meets up and when it will have to debate the EP's position, which has already partly been set out and which includes the possibility of including the option of real indirect costs. (JK/trans.fl)