EU R&D budget to rise 13.3% to €7.6B in 2012

European Union spending on research and development will rise by over 13 per cent in 2012, to €7.6 billion, despite cutbacks being made by many national governments in this and other areas of public spending.

However, funding for one of Europe’s most high profile technology projects, the Galileo global positioning system will be cut by €24.9 million, as part of what is described as, “A delicate balancing act combining austerity and growth boosting measures for 500 million Europeans,” by the EU’s Budget and Financial Programming Commissioner Janusz Lewandowski.

The figures are from the draft EU budget for 2012 adopted by the Commission yesterday (20 April 2011). The draft budget for 2012 forsees €132.7 billion in payments, a 4.9 per cent increase on 2011. Total commitments amount to €147.4bn, a rise of 3.7 per cent.

Even in times of austerity, bills must be paid

The Commission says that while the draft budget for 2012 has been drawn up to be in tune with the current austerity climate at a national level, it must honour its legal commitments. EU-funded programmes launched in 2007 are now running at full speed. This means that in 2012 it will have more bills to pay to reimburse regional authorities and SMEs that have invested in those programmes. In particular, this means payment levels for Framework Programme 7, will be up 13.3 per cent to €7.6 billion and the Structural and Cohesion funds will rise by 8.4 per cent to €45.1 billion.

“Some ask why we would increase the EU budget when Member States face severe austerity measures at home,” says Lewandowski. “This is a legitimate question. The main reason for the increase is that we must pay the bills coming from projects from across Europe.”

The projects would probably never have been launched back in 2007 without EU money; to stop funding them now is “unthinkable”, Lewandowski says. “Firstly we could be sued for not respecting the terms of the contracts, secondly this would harm Member States’ budget even more since they expect us to reimburse the EU share of the funding that they have already paid to beneficiaries; thirdly, stopping such projects half-way through would be detrimental to whole communities.”

Lewandowski claims the Commission has made a particular effort to cut its overheads and is freezing administrative expenditure for 2012. This real-terms cut in spending will be achieved by reducing expenditure linked to buildings, information and communication technology, studies, publications, missions, conferences and meetings and for the third year in a row there will be a freeze on creating any new positions.