European Parliament: ‘Hands off Framework’

Edit Herczog MEP

“Our bottom line is, don’t touch FP7, move your hands away,” warns Herczog. “If you simply use the current Framework Programme to fund new initiatives, and don’t raise the budget, you kill FP7.”

Herczog made her comments in an interview with Science|Business, in the early stages of a difficult budgetary process for 2011 that is expected to run until the end of November. Parliament is adopting its official common position on the new EU budget this week (15-17 June). The demand for an increase of the budget comes as member states get ready to implement tough austerity measures, and consider cuts in the EU budget.

Meanwhile, the ITRE committee points out, in a written opinion drafted by Herczog, that the EU budget as proposed by the European Commission in April has “no additional financial means for funding new initiatives without severely undermining important existing programmes.” The Budget committee has already adopted the document.

“The scope has changed. Under the Lisbon Treaty a range of completely new territories fall under community policy and have the right to apply for funds from the 2011 budget. If all these new territories fall under FP7, the programme will explode,” she says.

“Our primary target as a parliament is to make sure there is sufficient funding to keep the current and newly allocated projects that will fall under the budget running. If there is no sufficient funding, we will raise the question about responsibility,” warns Herczog. “Who is responsible? Is it the Commission, because they don’t have the courage to go for it, and propose a healthy budget? Or is it the Council, who are not willing to answer the Commission’s courage?” she says.

Herczog, who has 20 years of experience in both public and private research, strongly criticises the Commission and member states for embracing innovation, without backing it up with sufficient funding: “If innovation is a new promise under the EU’s 2020 strategy, it cannot be paid for by FP7. Otherwise it is not a new promise; you would just put it from one pocket into the other.”

Giving examples of projects that will now fall under the EU budget, Herczog says: “Over the next three years the experimental fusion power plant (ITER) in France will need €1.5 billion, satellite navigation system Galileo €1.5 billion and the earth observation project GMES will require 500 million.”

Herczog suggests that the member states create a temporary “piggy bank,” to fund the new initiatives over the three remaining years of FP7. “The goal of the ITRE committee is to save FP7 from the huge number of new initiatives. If we don’t want to give up the Framework Programme, we need additional money.” The member states would have to put €1.5 billion into the piggy bank on an annual basis, for the next three years, according to Herczog.

“If you refuse to pay for the new innovation competencies, the world will not stop, but it will move on without us,” says Herczog, denouncing a strategy of simply not paying for the new projects that now fall under the EU budget until the new Framework Programme will be set up in 2013. “Will the market wait for us, or will it move to another continent?”

When asked how the ITRE committee can ask for an increase in the budget during such economically challenging times, Herczog responds with an analogy: “If you place a frog in boiling water, it will jump out in a minute. But if you place a frog in cold water, and then slowly turn the heat up, you will cook the frog because it cannot decide when to jump out. The question for Europe is: are we going to cook, or will we jump out of this recession?”

Explaining why Framework Programme 7 is already under pressure, even without the Lisbon changes, Herczog says: “While the population of the EU has doubled, the Framework Programme hasn’t. This means in effect a decrease of the current Framework budget in relation to its predecessor, FP6. Everyone is unsatisfied about this,” says Herczog.

The seventh incarnation of the research funding programme came into force in 2007 and has a total budget of €50.5 billion; it is up for revision in 2013. The scheme replaced the €17.5 billion Sixth Framework Programme, which ran from 2002 until 2006.

“Additionally, if the Budget of the European Union remains one per cent of EU GDP, this will mean at least a four per cent decrease of the budget in real value,” says Herczog, pointing out that the GDP in the European Union has dropped by four per cent during the financial crisis.

Suggesting an alternative way of increasing the research budget, by using unspent money from the EU’s agricultural policy, Herczog says: “This money could and should be spent on research, but due to regulations, no funds can be transferred between the agricultural and research parts of the budget.” Herczog proposes that unspent money from the agricultural policy would still be used for research by calling it “ecoculture related research.”

The Lisbon Treaty has given the European Parliament unprecedented control over the budget. The so called ‘ordinary legislative procedure’, a revamped version of what was known as co-decision in the pre-Lisbon era, has been extended to almost all policy areas, including the entire budget.

Representatives from Parliament, the Council of Ministers and the Commission will meet early next month to discuss the draft budget, which is to be adopted by the Council later that month. The European Parliament is scheduled to propose detailed budgetary amendments – which will include the actual numbers – by the end of September.

If Parliament and the Council, the Union’s two legislative bodies, are able to reach an agreement on the budget after the summer, the Council could sign it into law by the end of November at the latest.

Looking towards the future, Herczog believes that an overall increase of Europe’s R&D and innovation spending will remain necessary: “Nobody would call a company innovative, if it would spend less than ten per cent of its net turnover on innovation. I don’t think this should be much different for the European Union,” says Herczog, referring to the current three per cent target in the EU.