At the EU Competitiveness Council Meeting held in Brussels on 24th June, the Council of the European Union reached, by qualified majority a political agreement on the FP7 proposal. They also reached a unanimous political decision on Euratom (2007 – 2011). The agreement on FP7 included some modifications to the indicative budget breakdown of spending across FP7, as per the modified Commission FP7 proposal that followed the European Parliament’s First Reading.
The overall FP7 budget of €50,521m remains the same. The changes represent small increases to most Thematic areas in the Cooperation Specific Programmes, with the exception of Security and Space which sees a reduction of 78 million € compared to the Commission’s modified FP7 proposal and separate budget lines for the first time. The People Specific Programme sees an additional €1 million, whilst the Capacities Specific Programme sees the most changes. It receives an overall reduction of €74 million, but the detailed distribution shows a reduction in the Research Infrastructures and Science and Society programmes, and an increase in all the other programmes, plus the addition of a budget line for ‘Coherent development of research policies’.
The Council agreed the following indicative breakdowns across the Specific Programmes, with indicative figures from the Commission’s modified proposal in parentheses where this represents a change:
• Co-operation €32 365 million (€32 292 m)
• Ideas €7 460 million
• People €4 728 million (€4 727 m)
• Capacities €4 217 million (€4 291m )
• Non-nuclear actions of the JRC € 1 751 million
The proposed breakdown for the Co-operation Specific Programmes is as follows:
• Health €6 050 million (€5 984 m )
• Food, Agriculture and Biotechnology €1 935 million
• Information and Communication Technologies €9 110 million
• Nanosciences, Nanotechnologies, Material and new Production Technologies €3 500 million (€ 3467 m)
• Energy €2 300 million (€2 265 million)
• Environment (including Climate Change) €1900 million (€1 886 m)
• Transport (including Aeronautics) €4 180 million
• Socio-economic Sciences and the Humanities €610 million (€ 607 m)
• Security €1 430 million
• Space €1 350 million (€2 858 m with Security and Space in total, representing a reduction of € 78m across these themes)
The breakdown for the Capacities Specific Programme is as follows:
• Research infrastructures €1 850 million (€(2 008 m )
• Research for the benefit of SMEs €1 336million (€1 266 m)
• Regions of Knowledge €126 million
• Research Potential €370 million (€350 m)
• Science in Society €280 million (€359 m) • Coherent development of research policies €70 million (not included in the Commission’s modified FP7 proposal)
• Activities in International co-operation €185 million (€182 m)
