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As his presidency is renewed, José Manuel Barroso says he wants to appoint a chief scientist with a brief to oversee matters scientific across the Commission.

The €2 million Innovative Medicines initiative, set up to restore the competitive position of Europe’s pharma sector, has entered its second phase.

Setting up large teams to study the “known unknowns” of science leaves no room for the unexpected, says Sir Alec Jeffreys, the discoverer of genetic fingerprinting.

At €229 billion, R&D funding in Europe was unchanged from 2006 to 2007, and still has far to go to hit the Lisbon target of 3 per cent of GDP by 2010.