Barnier: Europeanise research funding, like agriculture
Europe's internal market commissioner, Michel Barnier, has issued a call for research and development funding to be steadily move away from the national level and over to the EU, similar to what happened with farming as a result of the Common Agriculture Policy.
"Why haven't we managed to do for research what we did for agriculture," he told a major conference in Brussels on Friday (10 June) looking at the future of EU research funding.
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"In big agricultural countries, there is no national agricultural budget anymore. We should have the same ambition for the research area."
Barnier's vision on the future of research policy came as the commission presented to research institutions, industry, universities, NGOs and scientists at the conference a report compiling the results of a consultation of sector stakeholders on how EU research and innovation funding should be transformed in the coming years.
The consultation was based on a European Commission green paper, published in early February and concluded in May.
The paper proposed a series of changes to EU research and innovation funding to make participation easier and boost its scientific and economic impact.
A key proposal would be a simplification and consolidation of the EU research funding landscape by reducing the number of instruments, removing overlap and improving the coordination with other sourcing of EU and national funds.
The changes, to be introduced in the next EU budget after 2013, cover three areas of EU research funding: the Framework Programme for research, the Competitiveness and Innovation Programme, and the European Institute of Innovation and Technology.
The commission was speaking in a personal capacity when comparing the moves to build a CAP for research, an EU official later clarified to EUobserver, but the vision of a Europeanisation of research is still very much the goal of the EU executive.
"He was speaking in a personal consideration. We are not as a college [of commissioners] putting any proposals regarding a CAP for research," the official said.
"The commissioner himself doesn't have much responsibility in this area, apart from issues of procurement, mobility, and intellectual property rights. He was just offering his support to the work of the commissioner responsible for research Máire Geoghegan-Quinn," he continued.
While the commission will propose a 'common strategic framework' for EU research funding in the autumn, there will not be any one single proposal in any case "to achieve a Europeanisation of research", he added. Rather, the "political vision" will be achieved through a series of measures in many fields.
"It is really difficult to get real support from member states around these topics," he said. "How the Europeanisation can be achieved is still in discussion. In practice it will be much more difficult. It would make it much more dynamic to do this at an EU level, but national research strategies are preventing the movement in this direction."
The eurosceptic Ukip group in the European Parliament were quick to criticise the concept.
"Barnier has obviously no idea how innovation works," British MEP William Dartmouth MEP told this website. "If we were to take his approach new ideas would be stifled and competitiveness across the continent would be reduced."
"In the field of research, whilst collaboration between people is a good thing, having a multiplicity of funding sources and research programmes feeds into new ideas."
However, sector stakeholders embraced the idea, complaining that the current situation maintains too much overlap and confusion.
"The EU funding landscape is currently extremely complicated," argued Research Councils UK in the consultation document.
"A first step in rationalising, the Commission should carry out a thorough mapping of all EU instruments for research and innovation ... to identify overlap, with a view to merging, reducing or adapting them accordingly."