WRITTEN QUESTION E-3131/00

by Laura González Álvarez (GUE/NGL) to the Commission

(6 October 2000)

Subject: Commission decision to cancel the funding for the Get up and go programme

The Commission has cancelled the funding for the Get up and go programme, which is designed to make paraplegics mobile. It takes the view that the project has moved into a commercial phase and can consequently no longer be classed as basic research, this being a condition of eligibility for European financial support. It considers that the time has come for State health services in the Member States and the private sector to take over the responsibility. However, the cost of each operation is beyond the means of most patients.

The results achieved by the programme have been very encouraging and aroused great expectations among those who are immobile or confined to a wheelchair. At present, over 300 patients are still on the project waiting-list after they were selected to undergo the operation and were confidently expecting to regain their ability to walk.

Numerous organisations representing the patients, for example the Spanish State Association of the Disabled, have asked the Commission not to cancel the funding for the programme.

Could the Commission change its decision and continue to finance the project for a further four years?

What help can it offer to the more than 300 patients on the waiting-list?

What steps has it taken or will it take to encourage State health services and the private sector in the Member States to continue the project?

Will it promote a new avenue of research focusing on bone marrow transplantation and regeneration? What form might such a new programme take?

Joint answer to Written Questions E-3130/00 and E-3131/00 given by Mr Busquin on behalf of the Commission

(15 November 2000)

The contract covering the joint funding of the Stand Up And Walk(1) project was concluded for a three-year period which began on 1 July 1996. Its intention was to put the final touches to a programme for the partial restoration of the locomotive apparatus in certain paraplegic patients and planned, more particularly, to implant six neuro-stimulators in six patients in six Member States. That unique project, which pioneered European demonstration projects in medical research, and related to such a delicate, important subject, was carried out with remarkable success by Professor Rabischong and his partners. At no point in time has financial support, set at 1,5 million, been denied to the promoters of the project. The contract was neither terminated nor put on hold by the Commission. Since the project had been delayed to a certain extent the consortium asked for, and obtained from the Commission, two successive three-month extensions of the project, the deadline for which was reached normally on 30 June 2000.

In order to obtain new Community funding the consortium, just like any other partnership of research workers, must respond to a call for proposals published by the Commission in the Official Journal in connection with the Fifth Framework Programme for research and technical development (FPRTD)(2). The project proposals are selected by the Commission after these have been scrutinised by committees of independent experts in accordance with precise criteria and procedures that have been published in advance.

The contract linking the consortium and the Commission has never provided for the implants in 300 patients mentioned by the Honourable Members. The project involves six patients and the decision not to proceed with more than two implants was made by the promoters of the project and not by the Commission.

As in any other demonstration project the Commission's role is to enable its promoters to validate the technology before the widest audience possible, which seems to have been accomplished, in order to ease its transfer to clinical practice or to the market by themselves interacting with the various public and private bodies that are responsible for adopting them (regulatory authorities, ministries, industries). Apart from the funding granted the Commission has, moreover, contributed heavily towards drawing attention to the projects achievements (publications, posters at several events, press conference on 20 March 2000 by the member responsible for research). However, its purpose is not to upstage the project's promoters in the transfer, dissemination and application of their technology. This is even more the case in that the implant that has now been validated is able to marketed. Therefore support more downstream of the promoters would emerge from the precompetitive framework required by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Agreements.

As regards the scope currently offered by the Fifth FPRTD, the Quality of life and management of living resources programme is open to proposals concerning the handicaps and therapeutic strategies tackling these as part of the key activities: the cell factory (more particularly Section 3.1 in the work programme), ageing of the population and disabilities (and in particular Section 6.4), and generic activities relating to the research into persons suffering from disabilities, and the neurosciences. Moreover, the User-Friendly Information Society Programme devotes one of its sections of the key activity: Systems and services for the public, to persons having specific needs. This includes the disabled and the old. In view of the stage reached by the discussions on the Sixth FPRTD, it would be highly premature at this juncture to announce what will be the future conditions enabling the Community to support the research and technological development into the area referred to. As a result of the part that it plays in the codecision procedure Parliament will clearly be a stakeholder in the work that determines this.

(1) Reference BMH4-CT961501.

(2) It second publication is planned for 15 November 2000.