Information days for potential applicants were held across the EU during February 2007 (including one in Brussels on the 7-8 February attended by Silvia Marcos Simon).
Latest developments
On 19 June 2007 a call for proposals on the Health theme was published.
The budget is 549,000,000 EUR
Background
After the EU budget cut, the European Commission had to revise its proposal. The text was amended by the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers.
As Europe lags behind the USA and Japan in research spending, European leaders have committed themselves to reaching a target of 3% of EU GDP invested in research. The FP7 budget will bring spending to about 0.1% of EU GDP, below the objective, but nevertheless an important increase. Spending on research is seen as necessary if the EU is to reach its Lisbon-goal of becoming the ’most dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy in the world’.
However, despite the proposed budget of € 73 billion for FP7 for the period 2007-2013, the actual budget has been set at €50.5 billion.
The FP7 consists of four key programmes:
Cooperation: designed to gain leadership in key scientific and
technological areas by supporting trans-national co-operation.
Ideas: linked to the establishment of an autonomous European Research Council(ERC), which will support and stimulate the creativity and excellence of European research.
People: refers to the so called ’Marie Curie’ actions, which strengthen training, the career prospects and mobility of European researchers.
Capacities: developing and fully exploiting the EU’s research capacities through large-scale research infrastructure, regional cooperation and innovating SMEs.
The Cooperation Programme involves research on nine themes:
Health
Food, agriculture, fisheries and biotechnology
Information and Communication Technologies
Nano-sciences, nanotechnologies, materials and new production
technologies
Energy
Environment and climate change
Transport (including aeronautics)
Socio-economic sciences and the humanities
Space and security (this is a new theme for EU research)
Health
The European Commission has issued its first round of calls for proposals for the Seventh Research Programme (FP7) for 2007. The first call for proposals was issued in December 2006: call fiche and work programme for health, deadline April 2007 can be downloaded from the FP7 website. A second round of calls was issued in June 2007 with deadline September 2007.
Although Health had a planned budget of €8.5 billion for the whole period, it has in fact received €6.1b. Food, agriculture and biotechnology requested €2.1b, but received a reduced budget of €1.9b (also to include fisheries), and Environment (including climate change) requested €2.24 million, but received just under €1.9b.
The overall Health budget for Year 1 of FP7, has been allocated a total of €6.28 million.
Issues to be addressed in the health theme include health technologies and biotechnology, translating research for human health, and optimising the delivery of health care to EU citizens.
There is also a more focused approach on medical research. The major diseases mentioned are cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes/obesity, rare diseases and other chronic diseases (e.g. Osteoarthritis). Respiratory diseases are also mentioned.
In the theme Food, agriculture and biotechnology, there is an activity called ’Fork to farm’ that is to deal with issues related to "Food health and well being". In the theme Environment and climate change, there is one activity dedicated to ’Environment and Health’.
For more information see: Future European Union research policy
Criticisms
The new research programme has been criticised by a number of NGOs and community groups which have called for three changes:
Recast the themes of FP7 towards social, environmental and public health goals as outlined in this document.
Open research money to civil society control, with a reasonable percentage directly controlled by community groups.
Reducing the control of the allocation of research money by industry, and make their input commensurate with being just one of a number of stakeholders in society.(European Science Social Forum Network.)
In addition the way the budget will be allocated has been criticised. Each year new calls for proposals will be issued - the next date has been set for 18 September 2007. Some NGOs have raised concern that this will lead to a patchy approach due to inconsistent funding. A further concern is that this encourages competition amongst inter-related diseases which can often be suffered by a single individual.
Global Health
Neglected infectious diseases have been added into section 2.3. of the work programme, "Translational research in major infectious diseases: To confront major threats to public health". Whilst EPHA welcomes the addition of Neglected Infectious Diseases, the budget has not been proportionately increased, and as a result, poverty-related diseases which (including HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis) will have to share an already limited pool of funds.
According to a number of NGOs, the European Commission spent considerably less than the 400 million Euros it promised to spend on research into HIV/AIDs, malaria and TB under FP6.
Therefore, 24 organisations - including EPHA - sent a letter to to the Commissioner, the Head of the Health Unit at DG Research and the German Minister for Research to call upon an increase on funding on HIV/ADIDS and neglected diseases. (attached)
