WRITTEN QUESTION E-3666/01

by Charles Tannock (PPE-DE) to the Commission

(15 January 2002)

Subject: The re-employment of scientists who worked in Soviet biotechnology weapons laboratories

On Wednesday 21 November The Wall Street Journal Europe published an article (Turning the Bad Into Good) detailing the nature of the recent partnership agreement between Diversa Corp. a San Diego based genomics company and the State Centre for Applied Microbiology in Obelinsk Russia. The idea is to convert the former weapons plant, which used to produce large quantities of weapons-grade anthrax into a factory for the production of peaceful technologies such as microbe-detection devices, antifungal enzymes and antibiotics and to provide work for at least some of the many thousands of highly-qualified Soviet scientists who are currently unemployed or working in dead-end jobs and who are prime targets for rogue states or terrorist organisations such as Al-Quaeda.

Does the Commission commend the initiative of companies such as Diversa Corp. and has it done anything to encourage similarly imaginative initiatives by European companies? Does it also believe that the programme of the International Science and Technology Center, the multinational consortium sponsored by the U.S., the European Union, Japan and Russia which awarded grants of about $62 million in 2000, including one project that enabled former designers of computerised missile-guidance systems to create computer-based analytical models of leukaemia prognosis, needs to be considerably expanded if the skills of all these former Soviet scientists are to be harnessed to peaceful and productive purposes for the general benefit of mankind?

Answer given by Mr Busquin on behalf of the Commission

(26 February 2002)

The Commission is doing everything within its power to give active support to efforts to prevent or limit the spread of knowledge on weapons of mass destruction, including biological weapons banned by the 1972 Convention on the prohibition of biological weapons of 10 April 1972.

It was in this general context that the European Union together with other international partners and the Russian Federation set up the International Science and Technology Centre (ISTC) in Moscow in 1994. The ISTC seeks to support projects in Russia and the newly independent states (NISs) aimed at redirecting scientists involved in research into weapons of mass destruction towards research for civil purposes. The EU is thus financing 28 % of ISTC projects, behind the United States (38 %) but ahead of Japan (12 %). The EU is funding projects of the State Research Centre for Applied Microbiology in Obolensk (GosNIIPM), referred to by the Honourable Member, while the Commission is currently evaluating a project on the treatment of leukaemia proposed by this research centre.

Since 1994, from an overall budget allocation of some 441 million ($401 million), the Commission has put more than 120 million into funding ISTC projects through the TACIS budget. In particular the Commission has financed numerous biology-related projects for a total of 15 million. The United States, by comparison, has committed some 165 million to funding ISTC projects, including 31 million for biology projects. GosNIIPM is thus receiving investment funds totalling 8,4 million for 52 ISTC projects.

Beside the lavish support being offered by ISTC members, additional ISTC projects are being financed in partnership with industrialists and institutional players. This is the background to the agreement between Diversa Corporation and GosNIIPM. Partner projects today represent 21 % (in value terms) of projects financed by the ISTC and are backing up the ISTC's non-proliferation efforts. The Commission encourages and supports partnerships with European industry and has on several occasions stressed the advantages of such funding to European research bodies. The ISTC currently has 23 European partners who alone are financing 47 partner projects.

The ISTC is therefore a multilateral instrument without parallel for converting the Russian and NIS research apparatus, and the Commission attaches commensurate importance to it. The Commission currently allocates an annual budget of 21 million to the ISTC, and is represented at the ISTC's Moscow secretariat by a European executive director. In the foreseeable future the Commission intends to pursue this human and financial commitment to developing ISTC activities in the framework of the current TACIS programme.