Munich

In the frame: Janez Potočnik, an EU commissioner, is bullish about Europe's research programme. Credit: G. CERLES/AFP/GETTY/NEWSCOM

Officials in Brussels are drawing up plans for the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme of Research (FP7), and the proposed scope may cheer the continent's scientists.

The officials hope to avoid major revisions to the existing, Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) — but FP7 will be twice as big and include a more extensive basic-research component.

The proposal still has to survive months of political wrangling that will follow its publication by the European Commission in April. But early indications of its content suggest that the form-filling requirements that irked researchers in previous programmes will not worsen significantly.

According to commission insiders, the ‘instruments’ of the programme, such as the transnational Integrated Projects and Networks of Excellence, will remain the same. Instruments have sometimes changed radically between each Framework, so that experience gained in applying for one programme did not help much in the next.

The thematic areas are likely to remain the same: life sciences, information sciences, nanosciences, aeronautics, food quality, energy and governance. But they will be joined by two new ones: space science and security.

In preparing its plans, the EU Research Commission has taken into account various political demands, including the ‘Lisbon objectives’, set out in 2000, which aim to increase Europe's long-term competitiveness by strengthening research. In view of these, it will request that the four-year budget be more than doubled to some €30 billion (US$40 billion).

After publication, the plan has to be approved by both the European Parliament and the European Council. To ensure a smooth transition from FP6, which runs until 2006, final approval will be sought this September. This approval process has previously reduced Framework programmes and increased the bureaucratic burden on grantees. But Janez Potočnik, the Slovenian economist who became EU research commissioner in November, remains confident. “I hope we won't be forced to cut priorities that were favoured in Lisbon,” he says, adding that he doesn't expect this to happen.

A separate budget for a European Research Council will probably be included in the proposal. Some fear that the creation of this council could make the basic-research component of FP7 politically vulnerable, but Potočnik says he will fight to maintain it. “Basic research is fundamental to our plans at all levels,” he says.