After six attempts, it seemed that the European Commission had finally gotten it right. Its announcement in April that the Seventh Research Framework Programme (FP7) would substantially increase the amount spent in science by the European Union (EU) received a warm welcome from the European scientific community. But in June, the EU political leaders failed to agree on who is paying for what, and instead proposed substantial cuts to FP7's budget (page 811 in this issue). As a reduced budget seems inevitable, decision makers need to be careful about what they eliminate from FP7, ensuring that its innovative initiatives survive the funds slashing.

FP7's initial budget of €73 billion for the years 2007–2013 is over twice the amount included in the final version of FP6 (€17.5 billion for the four-year period 2003–2006). But to pay for this increase, some countries would need to spend more than 1% of their gross domestic product on the EU budget, a possibility firmly opposed by the UK. This opposition is not surprising, as research funding is one of the few areas of EU spending in which the UK gets more than it gives. Instead, the UK wants the budget increase to take place at the expense of agricultural subsidies, of which France is the main beneficiary.

Before the eventual stalemate between the two countries, the Luxembourg EU presidency had suggested a compromise, cutting FP7's budget down to €43 billion—still an increase over FP6, albeit substantially more modest. As few in the higher echelons of European politics seem to have challenged the proposed reduction to the research budget, it is unlikely that it will go back to the original €73 billion once the discussions resume. The key question is what will stay in FP7 and what will vanish.

Supporters of the budding European Research Council (ERC) worry that their initiative will be among those that face the ax. Inspired by the US National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation models, the ERC hopes to fund science driven by individual researchers, as opposed to the European tradition of sponsoring collaborative projects across the continent. The European Commission had earmarked €12 billion (about €2 billion per year) from the original FP7 budget to establish the ERC, and advocates of this initiative now fear that the EU will choose to continue funding programs from previous Framework Programmes at the expense of innovative funding strategies that do not have a track record of success.

But success is a relative term. Although the collaborative approach serves a key purpose—to foster the development of a strong scientific culture in regions that have historically lacked one—it has also created serious problems: vast amounts of red tape that have allowed bureaucrats to set the research agenda, and the need to secure international collaborations that are not always desirable in order to get money.

For example, investigators in one country may already have productive partnerships with certain colleagues, but to secure money from the EU, they might need to collaborate with researchers from a specific country in the spirit of European integration. As a result, collaborative projects are often contrived, as people may be more interested in getting the money than in building bridges across countries. And once the grant comes in, the collaborative drive often loses steam after the partners split the money. Clearly, the system is far from ideal, as it fails to foster the quality of European science, and in many researchers saw the ERC as an answer for their prayers for substantial changes.

By supporting the creation of the ERC and stimulating competitive, investigator-driven research, the EU could begin to rise above these shortcomings. Although the possibility of keeping the full level of funding in the FP7 budget seems slim, the EU should still support the creation of the ERC and fund it adequately; even the originally proposed €2 billion per year budget may be too little to make a significant impact in the region. To illustrate this point, the annual budgets of the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation are $28 and $5 billion, respectively.

It is time for the EU to do some soul searching and critically assess what it wants for the scientific future of Europe. At a worldwide level, Europe has failed to pull its weight in the context of global initiatives such as the search for a vaccine against HIV, and its failure to get the European & Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership off the ground has exposed the intricacies of its administrative labyrinths (page 809). At the domestic level, Europe needs to evaluate the returns it has gotten from the funding strategies of previous Framework Programmes. If budgetary restrictions ultimately need to be put in place, policy makers can choose to stick with more of the same or they could try to foster the competitiveness of Europe by sponsoring researcher-driven science. This may be a historic opportunity to reduce the scientific gap between Europe and the US. Hopefully it will not be missed.