Munich

Hard up: the European Bioinformatics Institute outside Cambridge faces a precarious future. Credit: D. DICKSON

Hopes that this week's meeting of Europe's research ministers might produce a quick political solution to the financial crisis threatening European life-sciences infrastructures appear to have been dashed.

The ministers have forced José Mariano Gago, Portugal's science minister and president of the European research council, to back down from a proposal to instruct the European Union (EU) to revise its existing funding rules, which exclude support of running costs for scientific facilities.

This is particularly disappointing for two such high-profile facilities: the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) at Hinxton Hall outside Cambridge and the European Mouse Mutant Archive (EMMA) at Monterotondo near Rome.

Although both were set up with support from the European Commission, funding from Brussels dried up last year as a result of a rule change in the EU's Fifth Framework Programme of Research (FP5). This now states that construction and operation of infrastructure in the life sciences are excluded from funding (see Nature 402, 4; 1999).

Both institutions are being kept alive by rescue funds, from the Italian research council for EMMA, and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory for the EBI. Long-term security is lacking, even though Gago asked European research commissioner Philippe Busquin in spring to make funding available to the facilities (see Nature 404, 217; 2000).

Gago also prepared a draft resolution to be presented to his fellow research ministers. But the initial draft, under which EMMA and EBI would have been re-eligible for funding under FP5, has been toned down significantly after member states expressed reservations. The revised draft merely “invites” the European Commission “to find a mechanism… enabling the Community to find a solution” to the problems of funding EMMA and EBI.

Even so, several EU member states — as well as the commission itself — still want all reference to EMMA and EBI to be omitted from the resolution. They suggest that infrastructure funding should be addressed in the 6th Framework Programme, for which discussions start in September.

A commission official points out that the work programme in FP5's ‘Quality of Life’ Special Programme was modified in November by restricting the clause excluding infrastructure funding to “routine operations”. This excludes costs for computation, or for freezing and storage of mouse embryos.

Busquin says the results of the last call for proposals should be monitored to assess the impact of the modified exclusion clause before the commission considers further modifications. But Gago says European scientists would then be “hostage to bureaucracy”.

Meanwhile, scientists at EMMA and EBI remain in a state of uncertainty. “We are still in a position of serious crisis,” says Graham Cameron, co-head of the EBI. The EBI's largest task, according to Cameron, is the setting up of ‘ArrayExpress’, a public-domain repository for microarray gene-sequence expression data, which the EBI is pursuing with the help of industry while still seeking long-term government support.

EBI scientists have applied for funding from FP5 for projects worth 30 million euros (US$29 million), of which only 1.5 million euros has so far been granted. EMMA gave up applying for FP5 money after its 1999 applications were turned down.

Infrastructure funding is a priority issue for the proposed ‘European Research Area’, a new initiative from Busquin. Options will be discussed in September at a high-level EU conference in Strasbourg.