Brussels, 12/12/2008 (Agence Europe) - 10 new projects have been added to the European roadmap on research infrastructure, the European Commission announced on Tuesday 9 December. “Developing world class infrastructures is an essential part of building the European Research Area, and must be one of the priorities of the EU and national recovery plans,” said European Research Commissioner Janez Potoènik at the European Conference on Research Infrastructures 2008 in Versailles. The second version of the roadmap, drafted by the European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) includes projects such as high security labs for research on fatal human pathogens, cutting edge installations to test technologies for carbon dioxide capture and storage, state-of-the-art radars to study the Earth's atmosphere, infrastructures to better understand the physical processes controlling earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis and new generation telescopes for high-energy gamma-ray astronomy. This update brings to 44 the number of priority projects in all branches of science.
At the conference, every speaker welcomed the work carried out by ESFRI. “In its work, ESFRI is anticipating and forecasting European research needs for the next 20 years. It is, however, work that requires each member state to draw up its own national roadmap,” said Valérie Pécresse, French Minister for Higher Education and Research. She also felt that “ESFRI's work must not lead to a geographical concentration of infrastructure projects”. One of the major challenges is the lack of European legal framework. The European Commission proposed just such a framework in the summer, and European research ministers approved virtually all of it. Nevertheless, a disagreement, involving mainly the United Kingdom and Germany, remains over exempting research infrastructure from VAT. Member states had to make sure that the proposal was adopted quickly and that it didn't fall victim to compromises that would make it less useful, stressed Potoènik, warning that if there was disagreement, the ESFRI projects could be held up for a number of years. It will, then, be for the Czech Presidency to make the decision on this issue. Pécresse gave assurances that there was “no concern” over financing research infrastructure on French soil. She did, however, acknowledge that the Commission had been asked to carry out as quickly as possible “an assessment of ITER's possible cost over-runs in the light of economic changes” (steep rise in the cost of raw materials and energy). She said, “There will be no further (financing) demands in the current legislative term” (see EUROPE 9789). (B.C./transl.rt)