Parliament's ITRE committee adopted, on 30 May 2006, the following budget breakdown proposal for FP7 (compared to the Commission's initial proposal), to be debated in the first reading in plenary on 15 June 2006:
Co-operation
| ITRE Committee (May 2006) | Commission (April 2005) | |
| Information society | 9020 | 12670 |
| Health | 6134 | 8317 |
| Transport (+ Aeronautics) | 4150 | 5940 |
| Nanotech and new production technologies | 3467 | 4832 |
| Security | 1429 | 3960 for security and space together |
| Space | 1429 | |
| Energy | 2385 | 2931 |
| Environment (+ climate change) | 1886 | 2535 |
| Food, agriculture and biotechnology | 1935 | 2455 |
| Socio-economic sciences and the humanities | 657 | 792 |
| 32492 | 44432 |
Ideas
| ITRE Committee (May 2006) | Commission (April 2005) |
| 7560 |
11862 |
People
| ITRE Committee (May 2006) | Commission (April 2005) |
| 4777 |
7129 |
Capacities
| ITRE Committee (May 2006) | Commission (April 2005) |
| 3944 |
7486 |
| ITRE Committee (May 2006) | Commission (April 2005) |
| 1751 |
1817 |
Analysis of this breakdown shows, percentagewise, somewhat unequal cuts to different programmes, and thus indicates which areas the Parliament considers priorities. Non-nuclear funds of the JRC are cut by only 4% whereas Capacities' (research infrastructures, regional co-operation, SME support) funds are cut by 48%. Ideas, the funding for the establishment of the European Research Council, is cut by 37%.
The Euratom framework programme's (2007-2011) budget was cut by around 10% from 3 to 2.7 billion euro. Euratom covers research and training activities in the nuclear sector.
The budget allocation for the different research themes in the Co-operation programme is somewhat equally diminished by 30% for all, except little less for energy (18%), socio-economic research (18%) and for food, agriculture and biotechnology (22%).
The ITRE committee also divided the Space and Security theme to two separate ones and gave green light for the EU to finance research on embryonic stem cells, depending on member states' legal framework and under strict control. The FP6 has funded some embryonic stem cell research, except in countries, which ban such funding. Commissioner Janez Potočnik wishes to maintain these guidelines in the FP7, but some member states, namely Austria, Germany, Malta, Poland and Slovakia strongly oppose the EU funding embryonic stem cell research, whereas Italy recently withdrew its opposition.
