Brussels, 31/05/2006 (Agence Europe) -Tuesday 30 May was a good day for the seventh framework programme for research and development, with a budget of 54.5 billion over the period 2007-2013. Firstly, the Research Ministers, meeting within the framework of the Competitiveness Council, approved a general orientation in line with the architecture proposed by the European Commission. Secondly, over at the Parliament, the committee on industry approved, by a convincing majority (36 votes in favour, seven against and two abstentions) the report by Jerzy Buzek (EPP-ED, Poland), in preparation for the plenary vote at first reading on 15 June. To a greater or lesser extent, the stances adopted by both institutions have ended up fairly similar, which guarantees that the negotiations planned for July will go well and a definitive agreement can be expected no later than September. Included among the points of agreement are the form of the future European Research Council and the decision to divide the thematic priority "space and security" of the "cooperation" programme into two. As usual, many parliamentary amendments have created a superstructure of detailed priorities within each objective, which may still change at the plenary vote.
The main differences between the two institutions lie in the way they would choose to allocate the extra 300 million EUR granted as a result of the negotiations on the financial perspectives, which the Commission had not yet distributed in the budgetary execution of the programme. Although the ministers were pleased to grant this money to the "Cooperation" programme- as too did the committee on industry- the parliamentarians also wish to boost the "Personnel" programme (attracting researchers and their mobility) to the detriment of the "Capacities" programme (infrastructure). Here is an overview of these differences with, in brackets, the sum proposed by the Commission before the allocation of the additional 300 million: (a) Cooperation programme: Council 32,315; Parliament 32,492 (32,202 million EUR) to be divided up as follows: - information society: Council 9,120; EP 9,020 (9,080); - healthcare: Council 6,000; EP 6,134 (5,984); - transport, including aeronautics and Galileo: Council 4,195; EP 4,150 (4,150); - nanotechnologies and material: Council 3,505; EP 3,467 (3,467); - space and security: Council 2,750 (1,430 for space and 1,324 security); EP 2,858 = 1,429 x 2 (2,235); - energy: Council 2,300; EP 2,385 (2,235); - agro-food and biotechnologies: Council 1,935; EP 1,935 (1,935); - socio-economic and human sciences: Council 610; EP 657 (602); (b) Ideas programme: Council 7,460; EP 7,560 (7,480); (c) Personnel programme: Council 4,728; EP 4,777 (4,577); (d) Capacities programme: Council 4, 267; EP 3,944 (4,193) to be divided up as follows: - research infrastructures: Council 1,900; EP 1,708 (2,008); - research for SMEs: Council 1,336; EP 1,328 (1,228); - science in society: Council 280; EP 329 (329); - research potential: Council 370; EP 320 (320); -international cooperation: Council 185; EP 133 (182); - knowledge regions: Council 126; EP 126 (126); (e) non-nuclear activities of the JCR: Council 1,751; EP 1,751 (1,751 million EUR).
Whereas the Parliamentary committee adopted another Buzek report on the EURATOM programme, on which the Parliament is only consulted, the Council failed on Tuesday to reach the unanimity required to approve its general orientation on the nuclear plank of the seventh FPRD for the period 2007-2011. Austria, which does not intend to endanger an agreement under the Finnish Presidency, has called for all money earmarked for nuclear fission to go solely to research into safety issues. Although Vice-Chancellor Hubert Gorbach described this impasse as a "kind of veto", Education and Research Minister Elisabeth Gehrer preferred to use the term "reservation". The EURATOM programme will spend 2.9 billion EUR on fusion (the international project ITER), and some 411 million on fission and radio protection.