WRITTEN QUESTION E-2323/99

by Daniela Raschhofer (NI) to the Commission

(13 December 1999)

Subject: Agreement for scientific and technological cooperation between the EC and the People's Republic of China

The Commission is proposing that a scientific and technological agreement should be concluded with the People's Republic of China. It would provide for an increase in cooperation and exchanges of views on research and development.

As the Committee on Budgets has already stated, further and more precise information is needed from the Commission in this regard.

Without answers to the following questions it will be impossible to give this matter appropriate consideration:

1. What financial contribution will the Chinese partners be making to the research activities?

2. Are there any analyses of the benefits and cost efficiency of international cooperation agreements of this kind? If so, what do they say?

3. To what extent are scientists, research workers, officials and other public employees involved under this cooperation agreement?

4. Does this agreement also extend to research in the area of biotechnology or military biotechnology?

Joint answer to Written Questions E-2322/99, E-2323/99 and E-2324/99 given by Mr Busquin on behalf of the Commission

(11 January 2000)

Partners from non-member countries in all scientific and technical cooperation projects entered into under these various agreements must ensure that their own research costs are covered.

Under those agreements, no Community funding is thus granted to partners from such countries. Nevertheless, in accordance with Council and Parliament Decisions, and as was the case before the agreements took effect, China and Argentina continue to remain eligible for Community funding under the specific research for development programme. As for Russia, even after the agreement takes effect it will continue to benefit from Community funding of its INCO-Copernicus and INTAS activities.

The scientific and technical cooperation agreements between the Community and Argentina, the Community and China and the Community and Russia will not, in themselves, generate any additional costs to the Community budget apart from the management costs arising from said agreements. There has so far been no genuine cost-benefit analysis of the other agreements on scientific and technological cooperation.

However, assessments are being, and will also be, carried out at cooperation-instrument and/or project level with Argentina, China and Russia, the same applying to the other agreements in force.

The agreements with Argentina and China make specific provision for such assessments at regular intervals, any extension of agreements being subject to the outcome of those assessments.

Community scientists and research workers are directly affected by those agreements, which enable them to enter into scientific and technical cooperation with their opposite numbers in the non-member countries concerned and to exchange ideas, experience and skills. That cooperation and those exchanges may, moreover, spur an increase in the human resources devoted to research within the Community.

The Commission's officials and other servants act as sources of information on the potential offered by the agreement for the scientific communities, and also follow up the cooperation entered into and turn this to account by their involvement, in particular, in the activities of each joint steering committee set up in order to implement each of these agreements. They then report to the joint bodies which are responsible for following-up all of their relationships with the Community for each of the countries concerned.

The S&T Cooperation Agreements only concern civilian research and embrace research in biotechnology. In the case of Russia, biotechnology is not referred to specifically but, in actual fact, is included implicitly in that biomedical research and health, which are increasingly dependent upon this, are themselves referred to specifically.