Brussels, 16/11/2000 (Agence Europe) - As announced earlier (see EUROPE of 15 November, p.7), the Research Council continued its work aimed at establishing a European Research Area, and adopted a resolution that mainly insists on rapid opening of national research programmes, researcher mobility and a European approach regarding research infrastructures.
The Council also approved a draft decision concerning the conception of an ITER project, aimed at establishing the feasibility and exploitation of solar thermonuclear energy. This decision bears on the Commission's brief to negotiate (Ed.: with Russia, Canada, Japan and Kazakhstan, the United States having pulled out in 1999) the international legal framework of the entity thus created, and in no
way prejudges the final decision on the building of the fusion reactor and the choice of location. At the present time, the ITER team comprises 96 people, 46 of whom are on the Garching site (Germany) and 50 on the Japanese site of Naka. The cost of building the reactor is estimated at EUR 3.6 billion.
Both Councils, moreover, that of the EU and that of the European Space Agency (ESA), approved a resolution which subscribes to the conception of a European strategy for space on the basis of the joint document prepared by the European Commission and ESA. During the final press conference, French Research Minister Roger-Gérard Sxhwartzenberg - who chaired the meeting - described as "more than symbolic" the fact that the two councils met on the same day in the same place. The Commission and the ESA must now set up a Task Force in order to have an effective cooperation framework for developing this strategy.
The surprise of this Council session came with the adoption, on a proposal from the French Presidency, of conclusions on BSE and the Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. The Council invites the Commission to create before the end of 2002, in consultation with Member States, a group of experts responsible for drawing up the results of research carried out on this subject in the Member States, promote exchange of information between research workers and indicate areas where research is a priority. As far as the human form of the disease is concerned, such action would mainly concern the prevention, detection and epidemiological and therapeutic research.
Mr Schwartzenberg refloated the idea of an Academy of Science. He presented to the Council a note concerning the timeliness of creating a light coordination structure emanating from all the European academic communities in order to give the Council, the European Parliament and the Commission a means of having access to top level expertise on a whole range of knowledge. In another note presented on Thursday, Mr Schwartzenberg invited the Commission to submit to the Council, before the end of the first half of 2001, a study on the concrete arrangements for coordination at European level of clinical tests concerning the HIV infection (AIDS virus) and, following this, on future vaccine testing.