EU Framework Programme for European research and technological development : evidence / Select Committee on Science and Technology.
- Great Britain. Parliament. House of Lords. Science and Technology Committee.
- Date:
- 1997
Licence: Open Government Licence
Credit: EU Framework Programme for European research and technological development : evidence / Select Committee on Science and Technology. Source: Wellcome Collection.
35/254 page 27
![Chairman contd. ] is important and separate from the added value principle. Article 3b of the Treaty requires that the Community does only the things which cannot be done by member states. So even if the programme can add value at a European level there is still no case to intervene unless to do so would be to achieve something which could not be achieved by member states acting individually or collectively outside the Community. Those are the principles that underline the UK position on FP5 and we have proposed in the paper a mechanism which is designed to give effect to those principles. My Lord Chairman, we welcome the Committee’s questions on this, which we will do our best to answer. 3. Thank you very much. You have raised an awful lot of issues there which we shall certainly follow up. You clearly feel there is a role for a European research programme. Why do you feel that? Is it the case that there are some projects which can only be delivered in this way? (Mr Wright) We believe so. We believe that the framework programmes give rise to two main forms of benefit: first for Europe and second for the UK. As regards Europe, the programme offers an opportunity in particular to bring to bear on trans- national problems the very best intellectual analysis across national borders, and also to raise the average of European industrial performance in the medium term. Those are the broad European objectives. For the UK there is a range of benefits. First, the framework programmes allow the UK to participate in technological breakthroughs which will lead to new products on the market and to the development of new tools, methods and procedures which can enhance manufacturing processes. Second, the programmes create access to new markets for both industrial and non-industrial participants. Firms linking up with other firms and with universities across Europe are getting access to new markets that way. Equally, universities here in the UK working with foreign firms are identifying new areas where they can embark on research, new people they can work with, new ideas and so on. Thirdly, the frameworks reduce the potential risk of UK participation in research, for example in proof of concept projects. Fourth, the frameworks permit capability development, particularly for smaller firms. Small firms beginning to participate in the programme can find opportunities to link up and make new connections which will enable them to embark on research and development, to develop their own capability for themselves. Finally, the frameworks allow the development of supplier chain interactions which can lead to much _ better understanding by companies of their users’ needs. One very large company in the UK has told us that one of the big things from their point of view is that they are able to talk to their customers’ customers’ customers and they have brought them together in the research context to identify what needs to be done and to put in place the research needed to do it. Most of these benefits occur directly to the participants in the programme. They extend far beyond the limits of the actual research undertaken. For many participants money is not the main incentive. It is these other factors that contribute the most in terms of benefits. The 1993 UK impact study which was carried out by PREST showed a very positive impact on all sectors involved in the programme, which was then the third framework programme, FP3. It also demonstrated that the benefits were genuinely additional, either absolutely or in terms of the volume, speed or the orientation of the relevant research. Taken together, we believe that these benefits fully justify the UK’s continuing participation in the programme. 4. We are now in the middle of the 4th Framework Programme. You have had to assess each of these programmes. There are other ways presumably of achieving a European framework programme on projects on a European basis. EUREKA is an example where you have something which is rather less bureaucratic, rather more streamlined. It is an enabler to bring people together. You have presumably been able to assess which adds most value to the process of the very rigid bureaucratic procedure (which everyone agrees needs streamlining) of the framework programme, or something rather different. How have you been able to assess this framework programme as something which is going to be desirable to continue? What have the results been in the past? (Mr Wright) The framework programme needs to be assessed on its own merits. One very important distinction between EUREKA and the framework programme is that EUREKA is very much nearer to the market, very much more in the product development area for the most part. The collaborations come together because there is a fairly direct commercial benefit to result from it. The framework programmes are positioned in a rather different place in the spectrum. They are designed to work further away from the market. The money that is made available through Europe can encourage rather higher risk research where there is not the same certainty of outcomes, or at a rather earlier level where the results of the research can have a wider impact on European competitiveness or policy in general. In that sense they are trying to do rather different things. As regards evaluation, it is difficult in so far as evaluation is inevitably a fairly long term process, and we have to move on to look at the next framework programme before we have fully evaluated the one we are currently in. However, the evaluations that have been done of FP3, which are complete, and the monitoring -and evaluation activities that are currently going in FP4, suggest that there is clear added value. Real results are being achieved which would not come about if it was left merely to member states to try to pull together the various parties across Europe to do this research further from the market. That is the big distinction. Lord Gregson 5. Arising out of the Euro-speak that you started explaining you said that the two main issues that were supported by these programmes were trans- national technologies that could not be done in any other way, technological breakthroughs. Can you give us an example of an outstanding trans-national issue that has been researched by the programme and](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b32218734_0035.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
