Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-02-24-Speech-4-026"
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"en.20050224.3.4-026"2
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".
Mr President, I much appreciate the strong support of this House. It is very encouraging for my future work. Many questions were asked, some of which I cannot answer very precisely, but I will group them together and try to be as informative as possible.
The worst thing for the new Member States and their researchers would be to create conditions under which they would not be able to compete. It is best for them to develop rapidly so that they are competitive from the very beginning. They are doing that already. I am very much aware that conditions in some countries mean that they cannot compete. We have to help them, but the question is how we do this.
Our programme seeks to achieve excellence and competitiveness in the EU, which is crucial. We have structural and cohesion funds for solidarity. If we are using these funds for road, rail and environmental infrastructure, we could and should use them for the development of research infrastructure as well. It is crucial that we create conditions in which researchers from the new Member States will remain in these countries and compete and cooperate with others in the European Union.
Simplification and streamlining should be the name of the game, otherwise we will have major problems. I am aware of all the challenges ahead of me and I count on your support. The Commission is not the only body involved: I have created a taskforce in my directorate. We now also have an inter-service task force. We are now organising sounding boards among SMEs and smaller groups, to give them a chance to voice their opinions on the proposals.
Framework programmes, research and development structures, cohesion programmes, and competitiveness and innovation programmes are crucial. These should seek to achieve the same goals. That is one of the points I would especially like to underline.
For smaller users, we are trying to establish better definitions for the instruments, which are often far from user-friendly, especially the integrated projects. On the other hand, simplification and streamlining are major problems for smaller users. For them, costs are proportionally much higher and burdens are greater than they are for the bigger users. I believe these two things will be crucial. We should bring more SMEs into the process itself.
In conclusion, I believe that the talks on the next financial perspective will be a kind of moment of truth. I hope that we will be strong enough to reach conclusions which tally with the Commission's proposal. I am afraid that if certain changes are made the structure of the budget will be worse than it is now. Thank you for your support.
The calculation behind doubling is made in real terms on a yearly basis and with the same assumptions in mind as with the other aspects of the debate on the new financial perspective. At the end of the day it is crucial that we double the funds as a percentage of GDP. That is a credible way of looking at it. Our proposal was based on that thinking and I believe that this proposal is ambitious enough to achieve our goals. I am more afraid of going backwards than of asking whether it goes far enough, although even that question is credible, too, and could be approached in an official way.
Public funding is not the only funding. As you know, public funding is estimated as being approximately one-third, with two-thirds private funding. So it is crucial that we increase public funding, because of the source and because of the leverage effect on private investment. However, as some of you stressed, it is even more crucial to create conditions under which companies will stay and invest in Europe. The latest figures are not promising: in 2002, investment by the 500 biggest companies in the European Union decreased by 2%; investment by the 500 biggest non-EU companies increased by 3.9%.
In Europe, around 24% of investment involves the car and spare part industries. In the rest of the world, information technology is the biggest sector with regard to investment. Those are the facts we have to deal with. That is why it is crucial to create a better environment for research and development. Ways of doing this might include state aid; tax incentives; intellectual property rights; the structural and cohesion funds; and risk and venture capital, which is certainly one of the problems.
Two days ago, I met the President of the European Investment Bank and we have already started to prepare actions in an effort to address that problem. Environment is crucial. If we want to achieve our goal, we need to create an environment in which companies will work, compete and carry out their research and development activities in Europe.
The framework programme now being discussed in the Commission has to take account of the Lisbon Agenda. I would like it to be simple, flexible, understandable, easily applicable and based on continuity. We would like to establish four major areas of support.
First, cooperation. Today we call this the 'collaborative approach', although in some countries the term 'collaboration' is not particularly acceptable. That area should be more industry-driven than it was in the past. That is why technology platforms should play an important role in deciding where money will go and how decisions are taken. It will be more thematically orientated and less instrumental than in the past. I believe that is the proper way to do it.
The second area is ideas. This means the European Research Council. This area is researcher-driven, so the division between basic and applicable research is practically outdated. We would try to make it clear what is industry-driven, what is politically driven and what is research-driven. That will be more transparent. We will give everyone the opportunity to make known their views on this.
The third area should be people. The major problem there is that they have been under-financed. The fourth area is capacities, which involves infrastructure, SMEs, regions and research potential. Here, we would like to address the question of new Member States, but not in a way that would undermine the excellence of the programme. Researchers in those countries should be supported so that they develop and become more visible. We should establish actions which allow us to access the structural and cohesion funds."@en1
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