DeeDee Doke/BRUSSELS
A campaign to revitalise Europe's scientific research and development community is picking up steam within the European Union's governing bodies.
On 15 June, the European Council in Luxembourg passed a resolution asking the European Commission (EC) to complete a series of tasks over the next 18 months en route to fulfilling EC Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin's vision of a European scientific community.
Among the tasks needed to be accomplished to create what Busquin called a European Research Area (ERA) are:
• the development of a community patent;
• costed initiatives for setting up a very high-speed transeuropean research network;
• the identification of and acting on methods of easing barriers to researchers' mobility across Europe.
One of the first mileposts must be reached this autumn, when the council expects to receive information on "the possible contribution and preparation of future research actions of the union" to the ERA, including the Framework programmes for Europe-wide research and technology funding, so that EC member states, the European Parliament and the council can debate the subject in the second half of the year.
While Busquin's vision of a co-operative, frontier-free scientific community extends well beyond Europe's aerospace community, aerospace R&D has become the focus of greater EC attention in the past 2½ years and has been acknowledged as crucial to European industrial innovation and competitiveness. In 1998, aerospace R&D received tangible proof of the EC's favour when it was flagged as a "key action", or separate budget item, under the four-year Fifth Framework programme. From 1999 to 2002, aerospace R&D has been allocated €700 million ($670 million).
Aspects of Busquin's proposed ERA can be applied to the transnational aerospace community, says Peter Fichtmüller, secretary general of the Brussels-based European Association of Aerospace Industries (AECMA).
"Certainly, we're looking forward to developing the concepts of the European Research Area by applying them to existing arrangements in the industry," Fichtmüller says.
"From our point of view, it [ERA] is a proposal for networking and benchmarking rather than for top-down regulation, and that is the constructive - and hopefully successful - approach to a difficult problem: to get the co-operation of people involved in all areas rather than to set up a new rigid structure."
Before assuming his AECMA role in 1995, Fichtmüller had a track record in transnational aerospace, having served as chairman and board member for aerospace joint ventures such as Panavia Aircraft, Eurocopter, Eurofighter and Euromissile.
With that experience in mind, he points to the "long tradition" of transnational co-operation that has led to the success of Airbus, Arianespace, the Panavia Tornado, the Eurofighter and Eurocopter helicopters, noting that those achievements resulted from partnerships instead of "the show being run by one organisation or by one individual. Of course, it always requires people who care for the joint success, and certainly the European Union [EU] and the EC should take an active role - but an active role specifically as broker rather than taking the role of the master."
An initial concern of AECMA with Busquin's proposal involved funding for the chain of research, from basic research through to the close-to-market elements of implementation and validation. "The one comment we have made to Commissioner Busquin, and he certainly has been listening to us, is that the majority of technology in Europe is actually developed by industry," Fichtmüller says.
"We're not saying that it should be exclusively industrial; industry has to rely on basic research implemented by research centres or by the universities they have to deal with. But certainly one could not give preference to one end of the chain at the expense of the others.''
Some aeronautics educators, particularly those in the UK, might not be too upset to see even greater preference for EU research funding given to industry. For some educational institutions conducting research, EU funding is a mixed blessing, with the net gain dependent on which country it operates in. For example, the UK's Cranfield College of Aeronautics is "doing very well" in Fifth Framework funding, says its head, Ian Poll. But because of how Cranfield is funded, Poll says, "we almost spend more than we're given to do the work".
In some European member countries, the state pays for research-related salaries - but not in the UK. "The government tells us we must go for it, there are technical reasons we must go for it. But the benefits are paper-thin at best," Poll says. "We're damned if we don't, and we're damned if we do. We've lived with this problem for 10 years now."
According to AECMA statistics, European industry funded 53% of the R&D conducted in 1999, compared with 47% paid for by European governments. The reverse situation is true in the USA.
On another aspect of Busquin's proposal for an ERA, Fichtmüller says: "Mobility for researchers should not be limited strictly to physically and permanently relocating people from one country to another. Instead, increased air travel and developing communication technology allow a decentralised network of excellence or expertise which would develop in a complementary way."
AECMA is setting up, for instance, a network on co-operative engineering and manufacturing called ENHANCE which would, he says, "provide a good basis to extend this into research".
Fichtmüller adds: "The tools are available, but they have to be organised, and that process is under way. But of course we would like the possibility to open within the Busquin initiative to enhance the potential that is there in cultural and organisational backgrounds."
On future framework programme funding, Fichtmüller says: "It is for the industry very obvious that this has to be a continued effort and not a one-off effort. You have to go for a marathon in aerospace R&D, rather than a sprint."
Source: Flight International
