Munich

European scientists have long griped about the bureaucracy and delays involved in extracting funds from the European Commission. Their complaints have now been endorsed by an independent advisory panel that says improvements are essential if the commission is to achieve its goals.

A survey carried out for the panel found that only 70% of participants in the commission's Framework research programmes thought the benefits had outweighed the costs. Two-thirds complained that the application process was too slow and/or costly, and 45% found the application procedures difficult to follow.

The panel says that the Framework programme is unable to meet the coordinated science-policy goals outlined by the heads of government at a summit meeting in Lisbon last spring, intended to make Europe the world's most dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy.

The commission sets up the panel every five years to evaluate its Framework programmes. Academics and industrialists from 11 countries carried out the 1995–99 assessment, chaired by Joan Majó, a former Spanish minister for industry.

The panel's main recommendation is that the administration of the Framework programme should be aligned with the practical needs of European scientists and industry. Its criticism of application procedures is based on the analysis of 2,275 responses to a survey of applicants to the third and fourth Framework programmes.

Scientists participating in the current fifth Framework programme (FP5) have similar complaints. With success rates less at than 20% in some sub-programmes, many researchers wonder whether applying is worth the effort (see Nature 404, 695; 2000).

Panel member Yves Farge, special adviser to France's Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, says the programmes' inefficiency is due mostly to cumbersome administrative procedures. “It is time now to react and to simplify the rules,” he says.

Commission officials are already exploring improvements to the application and evaluation procedure. Some of these will be tested next February in a pilot call for proposals in bioethics and the socio-economic aspects of biological research.

The commission is also considering changing the rule that FP5 grant proposals must be anonymous during the first stage of evaluation. Although intended to prevent biased evaluation, many scientists say that it has serious drawbacks. For example, the inability to cite their previous publications makes it hard for research groups to show that their work is truly innovative.

The panel also calls on the commission to encourage more proposals for high-risk, high-return projects. “The stock of ground-breaking new ideas developed in the 1990s will not last for ever,” says Farge.

http://www.cordis.lu/fp5/5yr_reports.htm