Mr President, I am going to be presenting the non-nuclear section of the report on the Joint Research Centre (JRC), which represents two thirds of its budget. In the Sixth Framework Programme, the Joint Research Centre will be refocusing its activities so as to strengthen its organisational role and participate usefully in the European Research Area. Its work programme has three distinguishing characteristics: concentration, openness and networking, and consumer-orientation. To this end, the Joint Research Centre has restructured its non-nuclear activities around two main areas, supported by specialist skills: food, chemical products and health, and sustainable environment and development. These areas will be supplemented by horizontal activities: technology foresight, reference materials and measurements, and public security and anti-fraud. The total budget allocated to the JRC’s activities stands at EUR 760 million. Its decision to adopt this new strategy and restructure its services was inspired by a report published last year by a high-level working party chaired by Étienne Davignon. These changes are intended to make the Joint Research Centre better adapted to the needs of political decision-makers and privileged users: the Council, Commission Directorates-General and Parliament. The JRC will also be active in giving impetus to the European Research Area and the Sixth Framework Programme. It will work on setting up a Community system to harmonise measurements and will participate in European and global networks. The JRC will be a high-profile player throughout the implementation of the Sixth Framework Programme, in terms of participating in both networks of excellence and integrated projects. It will be able to make an active contribution to developing the new European citizenship by providing a common knowledge base of scientific and technological references and by facilitating dialogue between scientists and decision-makers. It will also be expected to help with the ‘operational’ implementation of the new tools, including the stairways of excellence – as far as it is competent to do so, of course – and with integrating research into local development. In certain thematic areas, proposals from the Joint Research Centre would appear to be essential for specifying the public contracts that may be awarded, for example in the sustainable development sector. This sector encompasses all of the issues relating to ecosystems. For example, the JRC has spent more than a year and a half working on establishing the criteria for ecosites and will help to set up a European network. This also applies to food safety, where the JRC will help to establish a reference and standardisation system, and to the protection of individual privacy in information and communication technologies. The Joint Research Centre’s role as an advisor on European policy needs to be enhanced. It is improving networking and cooperation with public and private institutions in the Member States. It is also finalising a human resources and mobility plan, which involves in particular training young scientists and arranging exchanges with national research institutions. The point is not that it should become a research centre competing with other centres to research the scientific questions at issue in several Member States, but that it should ensure linkage between these centres when it comes to implementing the results and achieving the objectives of European directives. In the same way, the Commission must be able to turn to it for the most rapid response possible. It therefore needs to have teams that are capable of adjusting readily to requests made and reacting immediately. To do so, they must have knowledge of their fields permanently at their fingertips, keep up to date with upstream research, and even carry out additional research in areas that have not been covered by the national institutes. The JRC has an important part to play in the process of opening the programme up to the accession countries, to the countries of the Mediterranean region and to those involved in international cooperation under the MEDA and TACIS programmes. Let us not forget either the role of mediator that the Joint Research Centre has been called to play in the risk-management sector, on issues such as risk exposure, impact assessment, damages, and nuclear safety and waste problems, creating synergy in particular with the initiatives launched under the EUR-OPA Major Risks programme. The Centre should further develop its work on implementing practical projects on saving energy, in particular in the construction sector, and on renewable energies. It must not confine itself to research on photovoltaic energy, but must also promote demonstration projects in other areas, such as wind energy. It might also monitor the assessment of the introduction of fuel cells. Given the growing popularity of organic food products and traditional, locally-grown produce, the JRC will develop methods to ensure their authenticity and quality. It will also study ways of optimising their impact on the environment and local development. Finally, to make it possible for us to provide better guidance and if necessary to refocus particular studies in accordance with political developments on science, I think that it would be desirable for a monitoring committee to be set up that is in contact with Parliament, so that we would be kept abreast of its activities on a more regular basis, which would allow us to build on the fruitful exchanges we have had so far. In conclusion, the Joint Research Centre’s main objectives will therefore be to remain close to its users – the European Parliament and the Commission – to develop its role as a recognised centre of excellence on issues of safety, health and the environment, and to develop its activities as a promoter of research networks. The Joint Research Centre can therefore be expected to make a success of its commitment to reform and to justify its unique position within the European Commission. I should like to thank Commissioner Busquin and his services for having done all they could to help us to prepare this report and its conclusions which we are presenting to you today.

Political group: Verts-ALE