Sir

Your recent Editorial “Science needs the commission, Sturm und Drang and all” (Nature 426, 481; 2003) is most welcome. Among other things, it makes a much-needed and previously unrecognized point, namely that oversubscription by European scientists to funding offered by the European Commission's Framework programmes is “a sign of the need for European-level funding for basic research which does not exist elsewhere”, not “a sign of [the programmes'] success”, as naively argued by director general Achilleas Mitsos.

I would like to add a local observation. Swedish researchers have received more money through Framework programmes than the Swedish government has put into the programmes (see http://www.eufou.se). This is less a sign of Swedish scientists' excellence in application-writing than of an acute shortage of funding in national research councils and foundations. With an annual budget of €44 million (US$55 million), the Swedish Medical Research Council, for example, would only be able to finance three of the Network of Excellence collaborations offered by the latest Framework programme.