Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-02-15-Speech-4-007"
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"en.20010215.1.4-007"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, never before have I spoken for so long in Parliament. You may go for a nap in between because eight minutes really is rather long.
Commissioner, it is now almost a year since it was agreed during the European Council in Lisbon that the European Union wants to become the most competitive knowledge-based economy in the world and this Parliament rallied around that goal with a large majority. If the European Union wants to achieve this goal, then more investment in research, technological development, innovation and education is essential, both in the Member States as well as at European level. The creation of a European Research Area is vital to this. European research has proved a success: and the innovative efforts of Europe's businesses are also impressive, accounting in the first half of the 1990s for 33% of turnover. The European Framework Programmes of research and technological development have definitely contributed to this as well. The success of the Framework Programmes must therefore be retained in the future and that will also have to be demonstrated when the proposals for the sixth Framework Programme are discussed. But at the moment, ladies and gentlemen, there is absolutely no question of having one European research policy. The proposals made by Commissioner Busquin in order to actually bring such a policy about were well received by the Committee on Industry, External Trade, Research and Energy, but on a number of points we still have a few gaps to fill and some concerns to raise.
One way of creating an effective research area would be to ensure more cooperation on the basis of more Community objectives and flexible use of resources. Let us do away with techno-nationalism. The research policies of the Member States and that of the Union are currently pursued alongside each other without forming a coherent whole. In addition, we invest significantly less in research than the United States and Japan. These two factors mean that the ground lost to the United States has simply increased in the last few years.
In my first report on the European Research Area, I also went on about techno-nationalism, which has to vanish. Greater cooperation is needed between the Member States, researchers and research groups, but also between companies, universities and public research institutes. More coordination at a programme level is also necessary. There is a need for new forms of European cooperation, namely intermediary cooperation, or in other words between national research institutes as well as between the establishments which subsidise research in the Member States. But, ladies and gentlemen, cooperation in Europe will stand or fall with a state-of-the-art infrastructure. It is vital to extend a high-speed trans-European research network with a capacity of ten gigabits to a hundred gigabits in the future, in order to achieve a European Research Area and enable it to perform optimally. Only then will we also achieve cooperation such as that between centres of excellence. This goal will never be reached with the SEAN project, which is based on an increase of two gigabits per second per year. I therefore call upon Commissioners Liikanen and Busquin to show much more ambition in this matter.
As well as the creation of a European Research Area, we also have need of a European Educational Area, since a dynamic knowledge-based economy, which was talked about so much in Lisbon, requires not only high quality education at the same level in all Member States, but also mobility amongst researchers and students. Greater harmony between higher education and researcher training is necessary as well. I would like to hear the Commissioner's point of view on this matter.
The agreements reached in Nice concerning flexibility, variable geometry, or cooperation between a limited number of Member States in the field of research, create an obstacle for the Industry Committee. This forms a central part of Commissioner Busquin's plans. The Industry Committee expresses the strongest possible reservations concerning this cooperation between Member States, particularly if it involves spending European research funds. As it so happens, the Research Committee, this Parliament in other words, has the power of codecision where research at European level is concerned. If this brings about cooperation between the Member States, whereby the Member States finance this themselves, then there is no problem at all. But as soon as European funding is put into research from which only a couple of Member States profit as a result, then the codecision procedure will indeed have to be retained. That is laid down in the Treaty. That is why I would like to see the details of these plans take on a clearer shape, although we are definitely not opposed to more cooperation – because for all that, I have also said: let us do away with techno-nationalism – but as soon as European funding is in the picture, Parliament's power of codecision remains.
Another point is the role of small and medium-sized enterprises in the field of research. In the fifth Framework Programme we argued in favour of spending at least 10% on small and medium-sized enterprises within the thematic programmes. That was successful too. It appears that even more funding is going to small and medium-sized enterprises from the Fifth Framework Programme. In my report for the Industry Committee, we established once again that at least 10% must be spent on SMEs. Nevertheless I believe that having regard to current spending we can well afford to be a bit more ambitious, so I put it to you that in the coming Framework Programme the amount should be increased to 15% and, of course, I welcome your views on this as well.
One last point, Mr President, relates to an issue about which there is considerable doubt in Parliament and that is nuclear fusion research. Essentially, Parliament has very little to report on this, except that we do have to make the budget available. We were surprised, therefore, that you went to the Council to ask for their opinion on what should happen now with fusion, even before you made a statement yourself which would normally go to the Council and Parliament at the same time. I think that that is a slight reversal of the procedure. We hope therefore that you will ask our opinion on this as well and indeed also give an opinion on the budget that you would like to have seen, but we shall have to approve that first. So in fact we are asking to be fully involved in determining the policy regarding fusion research, as well as in determining the direction that it should take."@en1
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