UK Presidency to redraft the FP7 proposal

The UK presidency has announced that, based on discussions of the Competitiveness Council, it will present a compromise redraft of the Commission’s proposal on FP7.

The Competitiveness Council held its second orientation debate on the Commission’s FP7 proposal on 11 October 2005. The debate focused on the ‘ideas’ and ‘capacities’ sections of the proposal, as the ‘co-operation’ and ‘people’ sections had already been discussed in June 2005.

At the end of the ministerial meeting, the UK Minister for Science and Innovation Lord David Sainsbury said that the Presidency will draft a compromise FP7 proposal based on the discussions at the Council. Finding a compromise is necessary on two issues. One is the proposed European Research Council (ERC), the status of which has raised discussion among the research ministers – some agreeing with the initial Commission proposal, others proposing a “more autonomous entity where its scientific council would dispose of wider powers”. The second relates to research ethics, and concerns especially the ethical questions linked to stem cell research (see EURACTIV 22 September 2005).

The UK Presidency’s FP7 proposal will serve as a basis for reaching a partial general approach on the FP7 in the Competitiveness Council by its next meeting on 28-29 November 2005. “A partial general approach is a way of fixing Council discussions on non-budgetary elements which are linked to the pending negotiation on the financial perspective for the period 2007-2013. It leaves open the possibility of adjusting agreed parts of a proposal should that be necessary following agreement on budgetary amounts.”

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