Brussels, 18/12/2001 (Agence Europe) - The President of the Research Council, François-Xavier de Donnéa, Commissioner Philippe Busquin, the President of the European Parliament's Industry Committee, Carlos Westendorp, the rapporteur for the 6th Research and Development Framework Programme (FP6), Gérard Caudron, and the rapporteurs of the political groups met up on Tuesday afternoon ahead of the Industry Committee's meeting at which Messrs de Donnéa and Busquin presented MEPs with the outcome of the last Research Council (see EUROPE of 12 December, p.13). The representatives from the three institutions (along with a representative of the upcoming Spanish Presidency) confirmed their commitment to working together to formally adopt the FP6 before the end of the first half of next year. It should be possible to assess the document in first reading in the Industry Committee and the vote in the plenary session is likely to take place in the second April session (in Brussels on 25 April, more precisely). The Industry Committee welcomed the document as approved by the Research Ministers who agreed on the same guidelines as the European Parliament in its first reading. Negotiations are therefore expected to focus on various budgetary niceties.
The draft Council common position on the 6th Framework Programme is still in the hands of legal linguistic experts who are in the process of fine-tuning it. Because of a bottleneck following a raft of texts approved at the end of the year, it does not appear possible to speed up work so the document will not be submitted for approval to the Council before 21 January, which means that the date at which the three month period that the European Council has to examine the text in second reading will be postponed until 4 February (first EP plenary session in February). The Research Council meeting has been scheduled for 11 March, so the Research Ministers will not be able to look at the dossier (which may be assessed by the Permanent Representatives Committee), especially since the upcoming Spanish Presidency wants to negotiate and agreement with Parliament in the second reading to avoid having to go to conciliation.