Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-04-Speech-3-239"
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Mr President, Mr Harbour and Mr Piétrasanta – I apologise for not having replied to your question – firstly, as concerns pilot experiments for 2000-2001, we will make every effort to accurately assess the feasibility of certain elements, including that of networking. As you will see in the policy paper, discussions are already underway on two or three issues, which will be put into effect as of next year, bearing in mind, of course, the constraints associated with legal aspects of the Fifth Framework Programme. A degree of flexibility can, however, be shown in respect of certain issues. You will have three examples of this in the policy paper, and I hope that we will have the opportunity to discuss this matter again soon.
As regards the question that you refer to, you have spoken of participation in national programmes. I believe that this will be one of the key issues. If I am unable to give you an immediate reply on this today, it is because it was precisely my intention, in this policy paper, to invite the Member States to adopt a position, for there will never be a European Research Area if it stems solely from the will of the Commission. The Commission and the framework programme only account for 5% of research-related public expenditure. There can therefore be no talk of a European Research Area if we are only responsible for 5% of that research.
That is why it is important that on the 16th, at the meeting of the Ministers responsible for science, the Member States undertake to open up their national programmes. At that juncture, the contribution that we can make will consist of providing some sort of coordination. The States who agree to open up their programmes will foster coordination and mobility within a relationship yet to be defined – on a project by project basis, of course. Not all the projects will be opened up; some will be easier than others to integrate at a European level.
In response to Mr Lange, I would like to say that we are already beginning to take management measures. There is Mr Gerold’s report, certain elements of which I am still waiting to receive, but I can tell you now that, as it says in the policy paper, there is a need to increase the size of projects. We currently find ourselves somewhat overwhelmed by a host of projects that are too small, which make administration cumbersome, and which exacerbate constraints and lead to errors.
With regard to social and economic research, it is quite clear that there is a place for this. There will be an entire chapter on science, society and the citizens. We are going to draft a Communication on this subject. I indeed feel that, in Europe, research and development must be conducted with the citizens. There is a whole series of avenues that must be explored in the field of social and economic research, in the fields of foodstuffs, new technologies and, in particular, biotechnologies.
As regards the ECSC programme, you will be aware that an agreement has been reached, and that research will continue. It will not, until there is a proven need to the contrary, be totally incorporated into the framework programmes. It will retain its specific character. This, moreover, is the wish of those who negotiated the ECSC research programmes with the Commission.
In reply to Mr Alyssandrakis, I feel that commercial issues should not be allowed to predominate. In any case, the type of research that could be labelled ‘disinterested’, which is to say research that has no commercial goal, is often the type of research that produces the best results in economic and basic terms. I believe that everyone now realises the need to maintain an area which guarantees freedom of development to researchers, independently of purely commercial imperatives. Your question is very relevant, but we will have to wait to see what happens in practice. We do not intend to push commercial issues to the fore in all fields of research. Much targeted research has a highly prominent commercial aspect, but there are also more basic forms of research which serve general European Union policies and, at times, also have beneficial spin-offs for commercial interests.
Lastly, as regards centres of excellence, we are at precisely the point of preparing the applicable criteria. I would nonetheless like to emphasise one sentence which you will see in the policy paper that I feel to be very important, because the issue of centres of excellence has prompted many questions. It is inadvisable to define what exactly is excellent and what is not. We therefore feel that we should refer to the terms as they stand in the policy paper, namely the ‘networking of capabilities for excellence in the public sector (in particular university teams) and private-sector centres of excellence, which would be achieved with long-term joint programmes of activities’. This is therefore a bottom-up operation to be carried out not with hyper-centres, but with different teams working as part of a network. High-performance European- and international-level teams which link up to work as a network, regardless of where they are based. The information technologies now available make this quite possible, whatever the size of the teams."@en1
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