EU negotiators have broken months of deadlock over the Union's massive £11,872 million research budget, which in turn opens up opportunities for Irish participation. Academics and companies here are expected to win up to £200 million in research support over the next five years, according to predictions.
The breakthrough came late on Tuesday during the fourth formal negotiating session under the Union's conciliation procedures which are invoked when the Council of Ministers and the Parliament cannot agree terms on EU decisions.
The council had stayed with the position it took last February that the budget should not exceed £11,111 million. The Parliament and the Commission in turn agreed that the budget should not fall below £12,936 million.
The compromise reached fixed the five-year Fifth Framework Programme budget at £11,872 million. This figure will go forward for acceptance by the Parliament and at the next Science Council meeting in Brussels on December 10th.
The Minister of State for Science and Technology, Mr Noel Treacy, has predicted that Ireland could receive up to £200 million in the next programme. This estimate was based on Ireland doing at least as well as in the fourth programme.
Mr Treacy yesterday welcomed the significant breakthrough achieved by the negotiators. While the result would have to be formally passed by the Parliament and agreed at the council meeting, Mr Treacy said he was hopeful the new figure would be confirmed.
The only Irish member of the Parliament's negotiating team, Green MEP Ms Nuala Ahern, yesterday said she was delighted with the result. "I think it is great for Ireland, it is very important for the whole science sector.
"It is important for research projects, particularly in smaller states like ours, that the momentum is maintained. If we had not reached agreement there would have been a lot of nervous people who would have felt money for ongoing projects was not secure," she said.
Ms Ahern said the Green Party and Ireland, given their non-nuclear stance, had also won concessions on nuclear research. The EURATOM research budget was included in the Fourth Framework and took 9 per cent of the current budget. This would drop to 8.43 per cent in the Fifth Framework, she said. "Ireland doesn't benefit at all from this nuclear research," Ms Ahern added.
Dr John Donovan, of the Irish Research Scientists' Association, yesterday welcomed the agreement particularly because there would be no funding hiatus. It was disappointing that the agreed figure was so much lower than that originally proposed by the Parliament, he said.
"I think it is a fair compromise and it is welcomed," stated Dr Dick Kavanagh, of the Industry Research and Development Group, which represents companies involved in research. "It is higher than I expected."
The Fourth Framework Programme ends in December. Over its five years, Irish company and academic researchers will have received funding worth £150 million.
Ms Ahern said negotiations between the council and Parliament began last July and when no progress was made the formal conciliation procedures were introduced. This commits the participants to reaching agreement within six weeks. The first session took place in September and the negotiators were close to the deadline when agreement was achieved. "We were right up against the deadline," she said. "We basically had to agree this week."
Failure to reach terms during conciliation would have seriously threatened the continued funding of research within the EU. The Commission would have had to begin the entire budgetary process from the beginning again, procedures which began as long ago as March 1996. This would have meant no research funding at all during 1999 and possibly longer, Ms Ahern said.
The Austrian President of the Council of Ministers, Mr Caspar Einem, flew into Strasbourg for the negotiations. He co-chaired the seven-hour meeting, which ended just after midnight on Tuesday, with the Parliament's President, Mr Renzo Imbeni. There were 20 parliamentary negotiators and one from each member-state.
