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European research ministers intend to reverse controversial rules which have prevented the European Union's Fifth Framework Programme of Research (FP5) from supporting the running costs of European research facilities.

Life-science research facilities were thrown into crisis last year when officials at the European Commission unexpectedly said that institutions such as the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) in Cambridge and the European Mouse Mutant Archive (EMMA) at Monterotondo near Rome could not be funded as service facilities.

Both facilities, which life scientists hold to be essential for the development of their disciplines, had been set up with FP4 support, with the understanding that funding would be continued in future framework programmes ( Nature 402, 3; 1999).

The Council of Ministers had authorized support for infrastructures for a wide range of activities in FP5. However, commission officials interpreted the text of the FP5 document as excluding running costs for research facility infrastructures.

But José Mariano Gago, the Portugese science minister, told an informal meeting in Lisbon last week, where European Union (EU) research ministers met with heads of European science organizations and a handful of Nobel laureates, that he is not sure the interpretation was legal.

The ministers will now ask the commission to reverse its decision not to distribute money to the service facilities, said Gago. If the commission disagrees, he said, then the ministers will take a decision at their next formal meeting in June to unambiguously change the rules.

“Clearly the decision was not what the council of ministers intended,” Gago told Nature. “All the ministers think the situation is quite unfair and should be resolved immediately. The ministers did not decide [to stop funding for EBI and EMMA]… it was a decision by the commission which was taken in a bureaucratic way during the summer holidays.”

Gago says the ministers believe infrastructure support to be “essential” for research and development in Europe.

Glauco Tocchini-Valentini, secretary general of the European Molecular Biology Conference, welcomes Gago's statement. “Facilities like EBI and EMMA are close to catastrophe, so intervention at the political level is urgently needed.”

But the commission remains reluctant to “create a precedent for direct financing of infrastructures”, says a spokeswoman. The FP5 budget is limited, and demand, particularly in the life sciences, is growing, she says. The commission is setting up a working group to look into other options for saving EMMA and EBI.

The Lisbon meeting was the first time that EU research ministers had met with such a wide range of representatives from the scientific community. The EU no longer has a formal European scientific advisory structure. The advisory European Science and Technology Assembly, which was associated with FP4, was dissolved two years ago by former research commissioner Edith Cresson (see Nature 394, 817; 1998) and has not been replaced.

Nobel laureates at the meeting heavily criticized EU peer review systems and called for transparency and efficiency. Gago told Nature he thought a formal mechanism was needed for closer cooperation between the scientific community, the council and the commission. “The European research organizations and the national research councils must be part of the normal consultation process of the council and the commission,” says Gago.