Tony Blair is jeopardising his favourite EU projects by insisting on cuts to the EU budget.
Two months ago he very publicly gave his support to a new European Research Council, a new funding body that he hailed as the equivalent of America’s National Science Foundation.
The body aimed to help scientists wrest Nobel prizes away from the States. Britain is known to be in despair over Europe’s failure at science.
The idea was so simple it was surprising no one thought of it before: recreate the American system of science in Europe.
The means are: centralised science funding and creating a single market in research.
And lots of money. The ERC would have taken on an ossified European funding system that keeps science in separate national compartments. National research councils are Europe’s last monopolies.
The ERC would have been the first science funding body that accepted applications from all over Europe.
In the past, scientists were allowed to apply only to their national research council for money. This meant less competition as scientists researching similar things in different countries were not allowed to compete directly with each other.
The European Research council was supposed to invite scientists to compete cross border with each other and pick the best of them – awarding them with a larger sum of money than they would have received at national level.
This would have been an opportunity for east European scientists, talented yet hampered by their own cash strapped national research councils.
It would have inspired British scientists to work harder if they were invited to compete with the best of the rest of Europe, the government’s chief scientific officer told the Sprout recently. And the amount would have enabled European scientific projects to be able to compete directly with American ones.
One scientist, Jean Patrick Connerade, the chairman of Eurosciences, a lobby group, welcomed the ERC as a “chance to make Europe compete with America….It will bring the Nobel prizes back to Europe.”
Shortly after Blair’s speech, an ERC council was set up. But it has as yet no money to allocate funds. That depends on the outcome of the European budget discussions.
The portents do no look promising.
ERC’s proposed budget is 18 billion euros and was costed on the basis
that the EU’s funding would be a trillion euros over seven years. This amount was trimmed to 871 million euros by the Luxemboug presidency and 847 million euros by the British presidency.
The science budget faces the squeeze from this reduction since DG science asked for the biggest increase of all sectors. There is no money to cut from the other large sectors of EU spending. The agricultural budget is ring effectively fenced, and the east European member states want their regional development funds.
Whatever money is left over has to buy off other member states.
Everyone seems to have forgotten the ERC. There is no mention of it in the latest British budget proposal.
The British presidency published a revised budget proposal last week made up 8 billion euros a year for spending for science and economic growth.
It has included pet plans by the German chancellor and French president: a globalisation fund to help retrain workers laid of by competition from Asia.
There was also mention of getting a private financing facility assisted by the European Investment Bank to help fund research – a plan laid out by Chirac in the FT and le Figaro two months ago, to take pressure off the agricultural budget.
But no mention of the ERC. There is one other possibility.
The EU currently has an applied science budget of about five billion euros a year. – spent on development and technology.
The amount is clearly not now going to be doubled. It won’t be cut.
A source inside the commission said that ERC funding would, in extremis, be taken from this money. But it is halve spending on development and technology and that too is likely to be unacceptable
AT best it will be a very underfunded ERC.
Goodbye Nobel prizes.
