Members of the European Parliament were voting on the EU's Seventh Framework Programme for research (FP7) in Strasbourg on Thursday (15 June). The EU Council of Ministers is expected to give its final approval to the revised package at a meeting in July.
The overall programme is allocated a total budget of €50.5 billion euros, a substantial increase compared to the €16.3 billion available under the previous programme, FP6 (2002-2006).
Under the amended programme, some 2.4 billion euros are allocated to research on clean energies, with MEPs securing some 1.6 billion to renewable energies and energy efficiency programmes.
Environmentalists commended the Parliament's move as the Commission did not allocate money to specific energy sources in its original proposal, tabled in April last year. "This is €450 million more than the Commission proposed," said Claude Turmes MEP (Greens/EFA, Luxembourg), who campaigned to obtain more money for clean energies.
In a parallel vote, the Parliament allocated about €4 billion to nuclear research and training activities under the European Atomic Energy Community Treaty (Euratom), a separate heading of the EU treaties which dates back to the 1950's.
"This support for nuclear energy is a shameful own goal by the Parliament, which leaves a threatening legacy for the future," said said Frauke Thies, EU renewable energy policy campaigner at Greenpeace European unit.
