A guide to the silly season in Brussels

This is the silly season in Brussels. The 5-year mandate of the current European Commission ends next Summer, and the rules require all proposed laws to be passed or killed by the end of term.

So that makes the College of Commissioners (as it’s grandly called) look like the senior class at a typical university: Some are gulping pep-pills to get their theses finished on time, and some are spending more time at the beach (or the political equivalent thereof: The lecture circuit.) So that means anything or nothing can happen here over the next 12 months.

If your issues happen to be in the portfolio of one of the workaholic Commissioners, brace for news. By general consensus of the lobbyists in town, that would include Commissioner Redding (notice the torrent of new telecoms regulations flying out of Brussels lately?), Commissioner Kroes (while few new cases are expected, there is bound to be an acceleration in pending competition investigations), and Commissioner Potocnik. If you’re reading this, you’re probably more interested in his issues than most others – as they include how the Commission will spend the 54 billion euros that the Parliament has allocated to it for R&D in its flagship technology programme, Framework 7.

As an informal guide to the silly season, then, here’s our own list at Science|Business of a few of the issues we’re watching in the coming months in Brussels:

• FRAMEWORK 7. This programme provides most – but not all – of the R&D grants that come out of Brussels, and a mini-industry of lobbyists and consultants have grown up around it. The Commission is now beginning work on a formal review of how the programme has been doing since its approval by Parliament in November 2006 – gathering data on funds committed, progress of the projects, and problems that need fixing through the remainder of the programme (which ends in 2013, to be replaced by – wait for it – Framework 8.  And the Commission is still working on its evaluation of Frameowrk 6.) All this evaluation is unlikely to lead to any immediate changes, but it will lay the groundwork for changes that the Commission staff will be taking to the next Commission in July 2009. So, for universities, companies and research institutes that get money from the programme, it’s important to be on top of the latest thinking that’s emerging now in Brussels.
• EUROPEAN RESEARCH AREA. At a Council meeting earlier this year, the EU leaders set in motion “the Ljubljana process”  (after the city where the meeting happened) to create a bureacracy to manage the ERA. That, for those not living in the square kilometer around the Commission’s Berlaymont headquarters building, is a label for a collection of ideas and directives aimed at making a single market for R&D in Europe – reducing barriers to scientists moving from country to country, ideas getting patented or shared quickly and cheaply, and R&D policies and programmes getting coordinated better across Europe. So far, four communications or directives have emerged this year about what should be done – but now the Commission is setting up a system in the EU bureaucracy to oversee the ERA. Watch who gets appointed to which parts of the system – because it will shape events well beyond the current Commission.
• INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS. A communication is expected this Autumn from the Commission on how to coordinate R&D collaboration among Brussels, the EU members and countries outside the EU. At the moment, a spider’s web of bilateral deals happens in R&D – betwen London and New Delhi, Berlin and Washington, Madrid and Buenos Aires. At question is whether in some particular fields of research the EU could play a bigger role in helping organize these.  This one matters to multinationals, with an interest in globalized research networks.
• INNOVATION CLUSTERS. After an internal communication in July, the Commission is readying a public statement on what policies it recommends for creating dynamic, innovative clusters of technology companies – especially those centred around universities. Clusters like Silicon Vallley, Cambridge and (for bio) Stockholm have long been seen as a magnet for technology investment, but hitherto the Commission has had no coherent policy for how and where these clusters should be encouraged; everything has operated case-by-case, programme-by-programme. The French presidency of the EU is organizing three meetings on various aspects of the subject in the remainder of this year.
• EUROPEAN INSTITUTE OF INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY. That’s EIT for short – in the way Brussels does acronyms. This was a brainstorm of President Barroso in early 2007, to create a European version of MIT; and it was quickly pared down to a more modest “virtual” network of researchers and students from existing universities and institutes. So far, it has a budget and a just-named governing board. Next: What exactly is it going to do? Stay tuned.

This isn’t an exhaustive list – and we welcome hearing from our readers on other innovation and R&D-related issues they are following. Write me at richard.hudson@sciencebusiness.net to tell us what you thnk we should be reporting on in Brussels.