Siegfried Reich

Where does European research funding go?

September 13th, 2009

The image above shows the average yearly funding in Mrd. EUR (2.5 for FP5, 3.4 for FP6 and 7 for FP7 sofar) vs. number of projects funded.

There is a short, well written article in research eu, issue June 2009 (unfortunately it is not yet available online at http://ec.europa.eu/research/research-eu/index_de.html). The article is about the development of the European Framework Programms, it is written by Didier Buysse.

The main findings are:

• Over the years, the average annual funding was steadily increased. In FP5 (1998-2002) we talk about 2.5 Mrd. EUR per year, in FP6 (2002-2006) 3.4 Mrd. EUR and in FP7 (2007-2013) sofar 5.7 Mrd. EUR.
• At the same time the competition has heavily increased, we are now talking acceptance rates of about 20-25% across the whole programme (depending on the subject this may even be lower, e.g. ICT in Austria on average has an acceptance rate of 17% in FP7).
• The ambition of the Commission in FP6 and FP7 is to “think big”, i.e., have most of the money being spent in a few projects (this is what integrated projects do/should be doing; actually they cover about for instance 40% of the FP6 budget); also networks of excellence aim at clustering European research expertise to get higher critical masses; at the same time the smaller initiatives should not be neglected.
• The highest competition is in the human mobility programme (less than 20% on average)
• The biggest group amongst the players (about 50000) are the universities and public research labs (they build 2/3 of all participating parties).
• Public-private partnership is strengthened in FP7 with the Joint-technology-initiatives

On a personal note I believe that European research programmes (and the participation therein) are an established method/tool in doing (excellent) applied research. On the negative side, competition on the hand but also auditing on the other hand have increased dramatically, which overall makes the European research programmes less attractive than the used to be. Note on that: the issue in increased competition ist not the competition as such: this is a “healthy” element to ensure quality. However, if the acceptance rates go under 10% the gambling factor simply is too high.

Entry Filed under: Europe, Politics, Sigi's Blogworld