Proposed E.U. 2014-2020 Budget a Curate's Egg for Research. (February 12, 2013)

This past Friday the 27 prime ministers/presidents making up the leadership of the 27 nations of the European Union (EU) agreed for the first time in the history of the EU to cut its overall long-term budget allocation. The €960 billion for the 7 years from 2014 through 2020, cuts 3.4% from the current spending period.

As to the assessment that it's a curate's egg -- the fact that the section of the budget called "competitiveness," which includes research spending, got a boost of roughly 37% is good while a spokesman for Maire Geoghegan-Quinn, commissioner for research, innovation, and science says the main science funding program, called Horizon 2020, would get €70.96 billion, i.e. €9 billion less than the €80 billion proposed by the European Commission -- the European Union's executive arm -- which would be a 60% increase over the current funding program, called Framework 7.

However, as ScienceInsider's Gretchen Vogel notes: "Research leaders have been saying for months that €80 billion is the minimum needed to make Horizon 2020 work the way it is designed.

Because Framework 7 budgets increased from year to year during the funding period, 2013 funding is roughly €11 billion. That means that €70 billion over 7 years would be a decrease from current spending. In addition, the plans for Horizon 2020 include a number of new programs and initiatives that Framework 7 doesn't fund."

But  then again there are the big ticket items which would be funded outside the Horizon 2020 program and which got mixed support: "The Galileo global positioning satellite system would receive €6.3 billion. The ITER fusion reactor would receive €2.7 billion. The Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) Earth-observing program would receive €3.79 billion. Both Galileo and ITER have won funding at or near to the commission's request but GMES has been cut back severely from the requested €5.8 billion."

It remains to be seen how the European Parliament will react to the proposed cuts. It had proposed an allocation for Horizon 2020 of €100 billion, i.e. €20 billion above the €80 billion minimum nominated by Europe's research leaders.

Commissioner Geoghegan-Quinn said in a statement this past Friday that during the upcoming discussions she "will continue to fight for increased funding for the research, innovation and science sectors".