After 19 month of negotiations and 2000 amendments - 700 of which were put to a vote - the European Parliament gave, in its plenary session on 30 November 2006, its final approval to the EU's Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7) for 2007-2013.
"It is a great day," said Research Commissioner Janez Potočnik, as the timely adoption of FP7 "will send a strong message to the scientific community, to industry and to the public at large".
The major changes compared with FP6 are the European Research Council (ERC), which "brings new logic into ERA", said Potočnik, referring to the fact that funding and other decisions by ERC will be taken by scientists only. This means that no political considerations will be taken into account when deciding on allocation of the ERC funds. "I think this is a major step forward for Europe and I hope this kind of new logical approach will bear fruit also in other discussions in other areas," added Potočnik.
He also said that the current technology platforms "have great potential to go beyond the framework programme and will be a major source of how we want to direct our funding in the co-operation programme".
In terms of funding, the FP7 budget represents a 40% yearly increase in real terms and a 60% yearly increase in nominal terms (75% in 2013) compared with FP6. The information and communication technologies is a big winner in the FP7, as the budget of the thematic ICT programme represents one fifth (€9 billion) of the total FP7 budget (€50.5bn). The Commission says that this is justified, as the ICT is a key enabling- technology for innovation in many other areas and, therefore, perfectly fits the EU's Lisbon Agenda.
With regards the part of energy research, "we have three main priorities", said the Parliament's FP7 rapporteur Jerzy Buzek. "The most important is energy efficiency. The others are renewables and clean coal and carbon-capture related research. Half of the energy budget (€2.35bn) will be allocated to efficiency and renewables and the other half for clean coal technologies," he added.
The environment research thematic programme, including climate change, has a comparitively small share of funds - €1.9bn for seven years. However, the Commission says that the issue will not be addressed only in this thematic priority but horizontally across many other priorities, such as transport or energy.
As to the funding for stem-cell research, the FP6 rules will continue to apply, but an extensive Commission declaration on the ethical framework of this type of funding will be published in the Official Journal as part of the FP7 package. It namely prohibits the destruction of embryos solely for the purposes of research or stem-cell procurement.
