Although it is thought that €100 billion will be allocated to the European research sector as part of the EU budget for 2021-2027, two reports published on Monday 25 May by the NGOs Global Health Action and the Corporate Europe Observatory highlight how the industry controls these funds. On Tuesday 26 May, the day before presentation of a new long-term budget proposal and a recovery plan that the Commission wants to be “green”, EUROPE spoke to the author of one of the reports, Martin Pigeon, who is a researcher for the Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO).
He observes that, for more than 15 years, through public-private partnerships (PPPs), industrial lobbies have controlled how European research funds are deployed.
The BBI, which is a partnership that was created for a ten-year period in 2014 and which is the subject of the report, is no exception. It connects the European Commission Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (DG RTD) with the Bio-based Industries Consortium, which is a lobby group for food, biotechnology, energy and other companies.
Lopsided partnership
The private actors set the BBI's strategic research agenda and its annual work plans, and sit on the management boards, and so have a right of veto with regard to calls for proposals.
“Once the industry has that kind of capability, it serves its interests. And that’s not surprising, as the way this partnership is structured allows it to. But there are also real abuses”, says Pigeon, and points out that so far the industry has only paid 3% of the financial contributions that it has pledged to the BBI.
This is a situation that the Commission “has complained about very strenuously” and has tried to resolve on a number of occasions. “The companies involved don’t want other companies to benefit from their money. That’s quite normal for a private company, but raises the question of why they are present at these levels of decision-making”, the researcher says.
So, although industry only provides in-kind resources (staff and facilities made available for research projects), the public sector contribution is €975 million.
Laudable “green” objectives, controversial results
In addition, although on paper the BBI appears to support the European Green Deal - the idea is to replace fossil fuels with ‘biomass’ - the report shows that the BBI poses a threat to “biodiversity and food supply”: biomass production has already reached maximum capacity and is being achieved at the cost of unsustainable agricultural and forestry practices.
Despite its “green” look, the BBI looks increasingly like a “false solution”, says Pigeon.
However, he believes that, given Member States' expectations with regard to the bio-economy and the support the European Commission has expressed for renewing a partnership similar to the BBI, it is highly likely that the partnership will be renewed and provided with even more public money.
“The problem is not that the industry is being given money, but that it's the industry that decides where it goes”, he says. With the companies that have not paid in mind, he also acknowledges that he “can’t understand why, despite this background, the Commission is about to go with the same programmes, the same partners and even larger sums of money”.
In answer to a question about the investigative reports published by the two NGOs, Johannes Bahrke, the Commission's spokesperson for research, confirmed that the Commission had taken note of the publications and “the criticism will be factored into the impact assessments and proposals for the next generation of public-private partnerships”.
To read the report, go to: https://bit.ly/2zx5PRe (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)