DUBLIN – Europe’s science community is expressing increasing levels of disquiet over an ambitious proposal from the newly installed president of the EC Jean-Claude Juncker to kick-start investment in Europe through a new public-private investment fund, the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI).

The initiative is one of the main agenda items for a two-day heads-of-government meeting in Strasbourg, France, which kicked off this morning.

At issue is Juncker’s plan to raid about €2.7 billion (US$3.3 billion) from the EU’s €77 billion Horizon 2020 R&D program. As currently envisaged, the EFSI aims to mobilize €315 billion of public and private capital over the next three years for investment in infrastructure projects across Europe, in order to provide a stimulus to the region’s flagging economy.

The EC’s contribution would be just €21 billion of the total – Juncker has set himself an ambitious target of securing a 15:1 leverage on that initial outlay. Some €5 billion would be earmarked for small and medium-sized companies and for mid-cap firms – this could rise to €75 billion if the leverage was obtained.

Juncker has highlighted several priority areas, most notably energy networks, digital infrastructure and transport infrastructure. Although the official proposal outlining the fund, which the EC published on Nov. 26, also refers to research and innovation as being important to European competitiveness, several scientific bodies are not convinced that this will lead to any concrete measures that will boost scientific research.

The Initiative for Science in Europe (ISE), an umbrella body representing 19 different research societies and organizations with a collective membership of 300,000 scientists, and the League of European Research Universities, which represents 21 of Europe’s leading universities, have both hit out at the plan.

“Horizon 2020 had already suffered from budget cuts on the way from the original proposal to the final decision. Further restrictions and delays associated to the establishment of the annual budgets interfere with the implementation of Horizon 2020,” Heidelberg, Germany-based ISE stated this week. “Any additional cuts on the funding programmes of Horizon 2020 would seriously endanger its essential contribution to the solution of urgent societal problems and impacts on Europe’s economy,” it added.

LERU took a similar line. “In the midst of 2014/2015 EU budget discussions between the EU institutions, which are already very threatening for Horizon 2020 and its awarded budget, this is a new subversion of the most important EU funding source for research and innovation,” it stated on Nov. 26. “Money diverted from Horizon 2020 could in theory lead to more private research and innovation investments and outcomes. In practice however we all know this is unlikely to happen, as money will be diverted to quick win projects that may please politicians and citizens but that will not invest in Europe’s future. If we want to survive as a forward-looking continent, we must invest in research, innovation and technology.”

A DIP IN RESEARCH FUNDING?

The ISE, executive coordinator Wolfgang Eppenschwandtner told BioWorld Today, is particularly concerned that the proposal would lead to a short-term dip in European research funding. The Juncker spending plans are front-end-loaded, whereas expenditure on the Horizon 2020 program is loaded onto the back-end of its 2014–2020 lifetime. So any short-term cuts would exacerbate the existing dip caused by the transition from the Seventh Framework Program (FP7), which reached a peak of €11.1 billion in spending commitments in its final year, in 2013.

Even without any additional cuts associated with the new strategic investment plan, Europe’s science budget for 2014 was just over €9 billion and will only rise to €9.6 billion in 2015, a spokeswoman for the EC’s Directorate General for Research, Science and Innovation, told BioWorld Today.

It is not yet clear what additional impact the EFSI initiative would have on Horizon 2020. “This is still being worked out as part of the overall legislative process to get the EFSI up and running,” the spokeswoman said. “The EC is already at work on a Basic Act for the new investment fund. It should be presented in January with the aim of having it adopted by the Council and European Parliament in June 2015 at the latest. A financial statement will be attached to this Basic Act, and this will show the sources of the funds, including funds from Horizon 2020.”

Opposition to the new fund is not universal, however. The European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industry Associations (EFPIA), now a partner of the European Commission through its participation in the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), has given the initiative a cautious welcome.

“EFPIA welcomes the commission’s important and ambitious initiative aimed at stimulating private sector investment in Europe. We note that the EFSI will be complementary to existing initiatives such as Horizon 2020,” a spokeswoman stated. “In principle, such an arrangement makes sense if the new scheme succeeds in leveraging the amount of private sector investment intended by the commission, and as long as that combined investment is directed towards projects that meet the well-thought out goals of those existing Commission initiatives,” she continued. EFPIA did, however, call for the fund to consider health-related infrastructure as another potential pillar of European competitiveness, given the strain on European health budgets associated with the region’s ageing population.

The precise contours of the plan are still taking shape. Juncker is now entering the three-way horse-trading process between the EC, the European Parliament and national governments that characterizes EU budget negotiations.