Emys, a robot developed as part of the Lirec (Living with robots and interactive companions) project funded by the EC (photo, ©2011 LIREC)
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM – The European Commission 20 July agreed to commit €7 billion to research and development, in what it says is its “biggest ever European Commission funding package”, designed to create some 174,000 jobs in the short term and another 450,000 in the long term and to stimulate nearly €80 billion in gross domestic product (GDP) growth within the next 15 years.
Research, Innovation and Science Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn says the package will be used for stimulating European innovation through research funding.
The funding will take the form of grants to 16,000 recipients in European universities and research organizations and to industry specialists, with “a focus on small and medium-sized enterprises”.
“A common problem is bridging the gap between research and the market, and this funding can help demonstrate the commercial potential of a new technology, for example, or that a new idea can work on a sufficiently large scale to be industrially viable,” the EC notes on Cordis, its news site.
“Challenges like climate change, energy and food security, health and an aging population can be better managed if public sector intervention is used effectively to stimulate the private sector and remove bottlenecks stopping the best and brightest ideas from reaching the market, due to problems such as a lack of finance or fragmentation in research.”
How the money will be spent
The EC details how the funds will be distributed. Key points include:
Henry Markram, Human Brain project
Adrian Ionescu, EPFL, Guardian Angels project
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – EPFL-led projects are two of the six accepted in the finals of a major research initiative by the European Commission, its FET (future technologies) flagship projects. At least two of the finalists will be funded by the EC to the tune of up to CHF1 billion over 10 years, with the decision about the winners to be announced in 2012.
The final project will make FET one of the largest research initiatives in the world, notes EPFL.
The two Lausanne-led international projects, both of which have already received EC funding to permit them to develop their proposals to date, are the Human Brain project and Guardian Angels.
Each will receive about €1.5 million to refine their proposals in the coming year.
The finalists were announced Wednesday 4 May in Budapest, Hungary, at a FET conference.
The other four finalists, listed by eGov Monitor, are:
- FuturICT Knowledge Accelerator and Crisis-Relief System: ICT can analyse vast amounts of data and complex situations so as to better predict natural disasters, or manage and respond to man-made disasters that cross national borders or continents.
- Graphene Science and technology for ICT and beyond: Graphene is a new substance developed by atomic and molecular scale manipulation that could replace silicon as the wonder material of the 21st century.
- IT Future of Medicine: digital technology has the power to deliver individualised medicine, based on molecular, physiological and anatomical data collected from individual patients and processed on the basis of globally integrated medical knowledge.
- Robot Companions for Citizens: soft skinned and intelligent robots have highly developed perceptive, cognitive and emotional skills, and can help people, radically changing the way humans interact with machines.
The first is the outgrowth of an earlier EPFL project led by Henry Markram, the Blue Brain project, now being developed by an international consortium. Human Brain integrates “everything we know about the brain into computer models and [uses] these models to simulate the actual working of the brain.
Ultimately, it will attempt to simulate the complete human brain,” according to the project’s web site.
Christofer Hierold, ETHZ, Guardian Angels project
GuardianAngels, under the direction of EPFL’s Adrian Ionescu and Christofer Hierold from ETHZ in Zurich is a zero-power project that “takes advantage of these recent developments in low-power electronics, energy harvesting and micro and nano-sensors to propose a new vision of the future: next-generation technology contributing to our wellbeing and our safety with simple, discrete and affordable high-tech accessories that seamlessly integrate into our daily life,” its web site notes.
Background, Human Brain project, GenevaLunch
Officials are looking into the destination of a 14-ton consignment of processed eggs that was sent to the UK from Holland, according to Reuters 7 January. Holland had earlier received eggs from some of the 4,700 poultry farms in Germany which have been closed due to excessive levels of dioxin found in some of their eggs.
German authorities have shut down the farms in a bid to trace the source of the highly toxic chemical dioxin which was introduced into poultry feed.
Authorities warn that although the levels of dioxin detected are above EU standards, they are small. European Commission health spokesman Frederic Vincent told Reuters: “The levels detected don’t pose a risk to human health. You would have to eat a lot of eggs, or a lot of processed products made with these eggs, in order for this to actually pose a risk to human health.”
Pressure grows on Bern to
The Gotthard tunnel, the day it was pierced: seen by the EC as a project critical to the future of European rail travel, came in for praise in the EC 2010 report
Bern, Switzerland and Brussels, Belgium (GenevaLunch) – The European Commission (EC) came down hard on Switzerland 14 December for the low tax rates offered by some Swiss cantons and confirmed it wants to find a simpler way to work together than through the current maze of bilateral agreements.
The EC made the expected statements in a report, the first review since 2008, on European Union and Efta relations. Efta has four members who are not EC members: Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.
A series of taxing discussions where EU condemns Swiss “state aid”
Harshest criticism was reserved for some Swiss cantons, which are attracting European companies with low tax rates (see swissinfo video, below). This has long been one of the greatest divides between Switzerland and the EU, and the philosophical gap is clearly not closing. According to the EC:
“The Council remains very concerned regarding certain cantonal company tax regimes of Switzerland creating an unacceptable distortion of competition, and reaffirms its position on this matter. It regrets that the lengthy dialogue on this issue has not yet led to an abolition of the state aid aspects of these regimes. The Council reiterates its call on Switzerland to abolish these tax incentives and to avoid taking internal measures, such as certain aspects of the New Swiss Regional Policy [ed. note: covering state aid for under-populated rural and mountain areas], which would be incompatible with the Agreement and may have the effect of distorting competition between EU border regions and Switzerland.”
But the Swiss take a different view:
A British member of the European parliament, Brian Simpson, has told the European Commission that more than 2,000 shipping containers are lost overboard in European waters every year. The number is rising steadily, he said in a question to the Commission 21 October. Many of the containers pose a hazard to shipping and could cause pollution, he says. Containers come loose when they are too heavy or improperly stowed, he said.
The European Commissioner in charge of innovation, research and science, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, responded that regulation of the weights of containers and the ways they are stowed was up to national governments or governed by international agreements. The European Commission would intervene only if these were deemed insufficient, she said.
A container is suspected to have been involved in the 2008 sinking of an Irish sailing training ship, the Asgard II, on a cruise between England and La Rochelle, France. More than 110 containers went overboard when the Italian container ship MSC Napoli went aground off the coast of southern England in February 2007.
Links to other sites: BBC, Sail World
The European Union’s finance ministers have agreed to a generous package of €500 billion in aid for Greece and the eurozone, the bulk of it in the form of loan guarantees. The European Commission will provide f €60b in emergency funding for members having “difficulties caused by exceptional circumstances beyond their control”, said Elena Salgado, Spain’s finance minister, who announced the deal. The IMF has agreed to provide an additional €250b package.
Stock markets rose on the news, with analysts saying it will stabilize the euro.
Links to other sites: BBC, Financial Times, Reuters, Wall Street Journal
Airlines cost estimate: €1.5-2.5b
The European Commission said Wednesday that April’s volcanic ash debacle, which closed airspace in much of Europe for several days, cost the tourism industry at least €1 billion, mainly to travel agents, tour operators and hotels, said the commission’s vice president, Antonio Tajani, responsible for industry and entrepreneurship. The initial estimates were accompanied by first figures for the cost to airlines, expected to be €1.5-2.5 billion.
Brussels, Belgium (GenevaLunch) - The European Commission reacted to Libya’s ban on visas for Schengen residents by saying it will meet later in the week to discuss the abrupt decision by Muammar Qadaffi’s government. Cecilia Malmstroem of Sweden, the commissioner for home affairs, provided a more immediate response: “The European Commission deplores the unilateral and disproportionate decision by Libyan authorities to suspend the delivery of visas to EU Schengen countries’ citizens. The commission also regrets that travelers who legally obtained visas before the suspension measure were refused entry when arriving in Libya.”
It is unclear if the move includes diplomats, but there are reports that people arriving in Tripoli with visas are being refused entry at the airport.
The visa ban appears to be in retaliation for an unconfirmed ban on travel to Switzerland, a member of the Schengen area, by close to 200 Libyans. Switzerland has not issued any information along these lines and the Swiss government has refused to confirm the information, which was reported by a Libyan newspaper generally considered close to one of Qadaffi’s sons.
(Reuters video) The European Union has two new leaders, in posts created by the Lisbon Treaty, which goes into effect 1 December 2009 following final approval by Ireland and the Czech Republic. Herman van Rompuy, Belgian prime minister, was named President of the European Council, a two-and-a-half year job. He was elected by a majority vote by the 27 members states. A key part of his job is to chair meetings of the European Commission. Catherine Ashton was made EU high representative for foreign affairs. She has been the EU’s trade commissioner for the past year.
The election of the pair, both of whom have relatively low profiles in international affairs, has been praised by the US, France and Germany but those who were hoping to see the first European president play a strong role are expressing disappointment. Turkey’s leaders are unhappy with Rompuy, who resisted Turkish membership and the UK media reaction has been more puzzled than enthusiastic.
Links to other sites: BBC, Die Welt (Ger), Guardian, UK, Le Monde (Fre), Le Temps (Fre), Times, UK
US and EU, warming up to aircraft negotiations
US Trade Representative Ron Kirk with EC Trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton, March 2009, at their first meeting
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A confidential interim WTO (World Trade Organization) report on European assistance to the aircraft industry, notably Airbus, was issued Friday, reports Frances Williams in the Financial Times, and a similar report on US assistance to Boeing is expected in the next few months.
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – EPFL, the federal polytechnical school in Lausanne, estimates it will receive €40 million in grant money awarded to researchers by the European Research Council (ERC) a grant-making body for frontier research funded by the European Commission. EPFL researchers lead other institutions Europe-wide in the number of grants received.
The European Commission has ordered French farmers to repay €30 million in subsidies that were paid out from 1992-2002, provoking a harsh reaction from the farmers. The Financial Times quotes François Lafitte, leader of Fédécom, the fruit and vegetable producers’ union, as saying that “Nobody will pay these subsidies . . . Firstly, because the amounts put forward by Brussels don’t add up. Secondly, because it would spell ruin for the industry.” The money was provided to help the industry face a crisis, but Brussels has ruled that the state aid was unfair competition. EU Business
Torsten Åkesson, Rolf-Dieter Heuer, et José Manuel Silva Rodriguez
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The European Research Area is significantly closer to becoming a working reality, with Cern (European Organization for Nuclear Research) and the European Commission (EC) signing a memorandum of understanding Friday 17 July. The two have agreed to work more closely together in several areas, a key one being to facilitate implementation of the European Strategy for Particle Physics, which has been defined by Cern.
The EC and Cern say the memorandum will provide a framework to cooperate and share knowledge in several areas: research programming, training and mobility of researchers, science education, open publishing, technology transfer, innovation, building next generation infrastructures (including e-infrastructures) and global scientific cooperation.
Bern with Geneva, La Sarraz, and St Gotthard, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Three Swiss sites have been declared European Heritage sites by the Swiss cultural affairs office, the country’s contribution to a French initiative signed by 18 European countries to designate an initial group of 60 sites which are important to European culture and heritage. The three are:
Saint Peter’s (St Pierre) cathedral in Geneva, for its links to religious reformer Jean Calvin
La Sarraz chateau in Vaud for its role as home to the International Congress for Modern Architecture from its founding in 1928 to 1959: the congress is considered the pioneer of modern urbanism in Europe
St Gotthard hospice in Ticino, on the mountain pass at 2,100 metres, which has for centuries served as a link and symbol of ties between northern and southern Europe.
José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, said Thursday that European nations now believe they are over-represented in international financial organizations and at the IMF (International Monetary Fund) meeting in Washington this weekend they will agree to let emerging nations take a stronger role. International Herald Tribune
The European Commission has said that it expects a weak UK economy to drag down Europe in 2009, but the continent will fare better economically than the United States. Financial Times
The European Commission Wednesday reduced its growth forecast for the European Union to 1.4% (1.3% for the euro area), down about a half point from its forecast in April, saying that growth is “expected to slow down sharply and inflation is set to remain higher than usual for some time.” The area will escape recession, but just, it added. The EC cited high commodity prices, housing market “corrections” and a global slowdown in growth as factors.
