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News

40% increase to EU R&D budget

Published: Monday 10 April 2006 | Updated: Monday 21 May 2007

The current state of play of the FP7 budget negotiations predicts a 40% increase, a total amount of 48 billion euro, in the EU R&D budget for 2007-2013.

Background:

The European Council reached a compromise on the EU's Financial Perspective for 2007-2013, in December 2005. This compromise heavily cuts the Commission's original budget (70 billion euro) proposed for the EU's Seventh Framework Programme for Science and Research (FP7). Based on the European Council conclusions, the Commission proposed an interinstitutional agreement on 14 February 2006.

The sub-heading 1A Competitiveness for growth and employment indicates a total budget of 47.8 billion euros for the FP7:

2007: 5.170
2008: 5.552
2009: 6.028
2010: 6.644
2011: 7.426
2012: 8.110
2013: 8.851
Total 47.781 million euro

Compared to the EU's 2006 R&D budget (5.044 million euro), the 8.851 million euro budget foreseen for the year 2013 represents an increase, in the yearly budget, of around 75%.

Other related news:

The European Parliament and the Austrian Presidency reached a compromise on the financial perspective 2007-2013 on 4 April 2006. Following this compromise, an extra 300 million euros will be allocated to FP7 compared to the amount decided by the European Council in December 2005. This brings the total FP7 budget to little over 48 billion euro. However, no final figure for FP7 budget is yet available in any official document, as the approval procedure is currently underway.

A 48 billion euro budget for FP7 represents, according to a Commission spokeswoman, a 40% increase in constant 2004 prizes (taking into account inflation rates) compared to the FP6 (2002-2006) and a 60% increase in current 2004 prizes (inflation not taken into account).

As to the Competitiveness and Innovation Programme (CIP), the Commission's original proposal planned 4 billion for the period 2007-2013. The December 2005 European Council cut the amount to around 2.9 billion euro and the MEPs managed to negotiate an extra 400 million euro on top of that. According to these calculations, a total budget of almost 3.3 billion euro will be dedicated to the CIP.

Positions:

Science and Research Commissioner Janez Potocnik has said that as the FP7 budget will not be as high as the Commission had hoped for, the resources have to be prioritised and focused on the topics that have the greatest added value for Europe and in terms of transforming knowledge into growth.

UNICE qualifies the Parliament-Austrian Presidency agreement as a "reasonable compromise between institutions, concluded in good time to allow for adoption of the legal bases needed fot future EU action programmes".

Next steps:

The member states will have to give their final green light to the agreement between the Parliament and the Austrian Presidency, but there should not be any major opposition from the governments.
After Council's approval (end of April 2006, written procedure), the budget needs to be voted in the Parliament plenary (mid-May 2006).
The Commission will come up with renewed proposal, taking into account of the reduced budget, probably in May 2006.
The Finnish Presidency must hurry the adoption of FP7 and CIP in due time for the programmes to start on 1 January 2007.