Source: EURLEX
Language: en
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**COMMISSION** **OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES**

Brussels, 08.01.1997
COM(96) 691 final

COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION

TO THE COUNCIL AND THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT

THE INTERNATIONAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY CENTRE (ISTC) IN
MOSCOW : RESULTS AND PROSPECTS

**INTRODUCTION**

**1.1** **The ISTC: a practical example of successful cooperation in a highly**
**sensitive field**

The end of the Cold War and the dismantling of the former Soviet Union's
administrative structures brought the Soviet Union's research and
development activities in the field of weapons of mass destruction to an
abrupt halt. Researchers in this field saw their standards of living plummet
and the opportunities to use their know-how shrink. There was a real danger
of **a** mass exodus by Russian scientists towards countries with unstable rulers
possessing or developing nuclear weapons.

The Russian government was quick to realize the gravity of the situation. At
**a** meeting with the US Secretary of State in Washington in November 1991,
the Russian foreign minister proposed that an international scientific research
fund be set up to keep Russian scientists and engineers specializing in
weapons of mass destruction from succumbing to tempting offers to sell their
knowledge and know-how in the world's trouble spots. On
27 November 1992 the United States, Japan, the European Communities and
the Russian Federation signed an agreement establishing the International
Science and Technology Centre (ISTC) in Moscow. The board met for the
first time in March 1994, adopting the ISTC's statutes and making the first
grants for approved projects. In the past two years the ISTC has handled
over 500 proposals, amply illustrating the importance attached to the Centre
by the military research institutions and the government departments above
them.

The conversion experience built up by the ISTC is helping the military
institutes gradually adapt to the international scientific environment without
losing their human capital. The development of new scientific concepts in the
civilian sphere and the introduction of modern project-management methods
offer military scientists a rare opportunity to adjust their thinking to the needs
of civil society and improve their international competitiveness.

If the quality of the topics proposed and the breadth of the fields touched-on
show the competence of the teams and the excellence of their R&D work,
they also demonstrate the firmness of the ISTC's partners' commitments.
The average investment of ECU 300 000 per project financed is a gauge of
the donors' readiness to commit themselves to well-defined and clearlytargeted projects on a scale sufficient to bring about the genuine conversion
of military scientists.

1.2 The Communities' crucial commitment to the ISTC

The Community's role in this initiative is to help restructure military R&D in
the New Independent States (NIS) by contributing to civilian projects
employing scientists previously engaged in developing weapons of massive
destruction. It is also to select, through the ISTC, projects that might interest
European scientists, researchers and industries. As Table 1 shows, Europe is
matching the United States' contribution to the ISTC's funding.

Table 1: budget commitments of the ISTC's partners (ECU million)

EC

20

10

15

_45,_ ;; *

Japan

14.1

14,1

Finland

1

1

1994

1995

1996

##### Total %

United States

20

19

12

##### **51**

Sweden

3.1

##### **11**

The ISTC is a central element of Community R&D cooperation with the NIS,
the others being: INCO-Copernicus, which is aimed at preserving the R&D
potential of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the NIS with a
view to helping resolve social, economic and environmental'problems and
stepping up R&D cooperation; INTAS (International Association for the
promotion of cooperation with scientists from the NIS), which mainly funds
joint research projects by scientists of the INTAS countries and the NIS,
finances seminars and grants bursaries to foster mobility among researchers.
These programmes attract comparable amounts of Community funding: in
1996 the ISTC was allocated ECU 15 million, INCO-Copernicus's activities
in the NIS ECU 14 million and INTAS 14 million. Where the ISTC differs

from the other two programmes is that it funds projects wholly executed by
NIS scientists and also involves financial support from the United States,
Japan, Sweden and Finland and contributions in kind from the Russian
Federation. By October this year, the ISTC's partners had invested a
cumulated total of ECU 96 million in 324 projects lasting from two to three
years on average and involving 15 000 researchers. By the end of the year
INTAS's partners will have invested a total of ECU 60 million in 1 200
projects.

2. ORGANIZATION AND OPERATION OF THE ISTC

The ISTC was set up with the long-term goal of redirecting the R&D efforts of
Russian military scientists and engineers towards peaceful activities. Though part of
a wider defence conversion effort, the principal motive for the ISTC project is the
need to prevent the proliferation of technologies and know-how relating to weapons
of mass destruction.

The ISTC is also governed by a legal framework laid down in its statutes, which
accord the inventor intellectual property rights while offering the donors an exclusive
and inalienable right to use that invention free of charge on their territory.

The ISTC has a secretariat, a board, a coordinating committee and a scientific
committee. It selects, finances and supervises scientific and technical projects. What
is unusual about the ISTC is that it pays researchers directly - not institutes or
laboratories - in US dollars, thereby gaining their trust and encouraging effort.

The ISTC is open to all the NIS. Besides Russia, the signatories to the agreement
establishing the ISTC are Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
For political reasons Ukraine has preferred to set up its own centre. The ISTC has
its headquarters in Moscow and branch offices in Minsk (Belarus) and Alma-Ata
(Kazakhstan). Community funding is channelled through the TACIS programme,
which provides technical assistance to smooth the passage of the NIS and Mongolia
to a market economy and democracy. The ISTC's projects complement nuclear
safety, energy, environment and telecommunications programmes already
contributing to the conversion of many scientists and engineers, regardless of
whether they had previously been involved in the production of weapons of mass
destruction.

THE ISTC'S ACHIEVEMENTS

In a context as complex as the former Soviet Union's tactical and strategic weapons
research, the very fact of the ISTC's existence - that it has survived and developed
smoothly - represents an unqualified success. This is attributable as much to the
Russian government as the international donors (the Communities, the United States
and Japan). The number of projects financed, the nature and variety of the sectors
concerned and the cooperation network built-up all attest to this success.

3.1 The number and scale of the projects financed

In October, after two and a half years of operation, ECU 96 million has been
invested in 324 projects directly involving 15 000 scientists previously
employed in the development of weapons of mass destruction, over 3000 of
them members of the hard core of military researchers.

3.2 The projects'fields

ISTC projects cover a wide range of scientific and technical fields; they reveal
the broad outlines of a development strategy based on the exchange of
knowledge and the introduction of modern production, safety and quality
methods.

This is particularly true in the nuclear field, which for reasons rooted in the
Soviet past accounts for almost half of the ISTC's activities. These activities
include safety analysis, especially in respect of rapid shutdowns, the recycling
of military plutonium and waste storage, the production of reports on marine
and soil pollution, the introduction of monitoring and safety procedures for
fissile materials, the transport of materials and the development of seismic
monitoring equipment.

ISTC projects in the field of basic research contribute to the integration of the
international scientific community. .Examples include CERN's ISTC projects,
projects concerning space exploration and others in the field of thermonuclear
fusion, and in particular the International Thermonuclear Experimental
Reactor (ITER).

The health sector offers biological warfare specialists an opportunity to
redirect their efforts into the development of new vaccines and the
introduction of modern production methods in the pharmaceutical sector.

Chemists are working to develop ways of destroying chemical weapons
which could prove important in the future, or studying methods for fighting
fires in industrial plants or oilfields.

Those specializing in launchers are now finding a natural home in the civil
aerospace sector. This area of activity accounts, however, for only 5% of the
ISTC's activities and should be improved with the backing of the European
Space Agency and the aerospace industry.

The ISTC also offers a vantage point from which to identify particularly
interesting areas of Russian science, promotes projects and acts as a catalyst
for new activities.

_Graph 1: Sectoral breakdown of CIST projects_

Funding by sector

of activity

1996

Instruments

13%

Electronics

5%

Medical

technologies

7%

Environment

**6%**

Materials

14%

Nuclear

environment

**18%**

Aerospace

5%

Basic research

9%

Energy production

9%

Nuclear safety

7%

3.3 The network formed

With more than 150 military research institutes involved in ISTC projects,
conversion to civilian activities is becoming a fact of everyday life, especially
for the prestigious institutes handling many of the projects, among them
Arzamas (37 projects), Chelyabinsk (24), Bochvar (11), Kurtchatov (12),
Lebedev (8), Ioffe (7), the Moscow Institute of Physics (8), NPO Vector etc.
Since Perestroïka, the ISTC is the first international organization to have
gained access to the closed cities where, in a climate of high security and
isolation from the world, scientists worked to develop weapons of mass
destruction.

An effective international instrument for assisting research and technological
development, the ISTC is now part of the broader framework governing
research policy in the NIS.

Its success can also be gauged by the scale of the cooperation between teams
from the NIS and the Communities. About 200 European research institutes,
universities and firms are involved in projects to some degree: examples
include the Forschungszenrum Karlsruhe, Rossendorf, CEA, BNFL, ENEA,
Siemens, Ansaldo, Framatome, Airbus, Codema and the Commission's Joint
Research Centre. European firms and institutes see the ISTC as an
opportunity to work with once-inaccessible institutes enjoying a reputation
for excellence in advanced technologies. It is also a gateway to the new
Russian Federation, enabling them to forge long-term working relationships
with defence laboratories and manufacturers working in fields associated with
ISTC projects. By systematically fostering cooperation with European
organizations on a case-by-case basis, the Commission is contributing to a
wider debate on ideas and approaches in the fields of advanced and applied
R&D. The knowledge accumulated by the former Soviet Union's defence
institutes combined with European know-how is helping weave lasting and
mutually-beneficial links between members of the international scientific and
industrial community.

Though such working relationships are often slow to take root, they
foreshadow future cooperation between the Communities and the NIS, and
especially the Russian Federation.

THE ISTC'S PROSPECTS

4.1 General outlook

Success should not obscure the need for adjustments to make the ISTC even
more effective. It has to get the different administrations to recognize its
international status and improve access to the closed cities, for which entry
permits can still take over 35 days to obtain. The tax-free salaries are also
becoming less attractive as time goes by, which could slow down conversion
if not adapted to current economic conditions, especially in Moscow. In the
Russian Federation, bilateral programmes are sometimes frowned on owing
to a certain ambiguity about matters of principle, especially where intellectual
property is concerned. This is not the case of the ISTC, which needs to be
seen as cooperative, law-abiding and useful to the nation. This has to be
brought home to the political authorities, among them the Duma, which is
paying increasing attention to the ISTC's activities. In Russia's current
political climate, the Duma's support, like that of the President, is crucial to
the ISTC's success.

In the Communities, the political will to back the ISTC is reflected in an
increase in its budget from this year on. This makes the Communities a key
partner for the Russian Federation. It coincides with the decision of the
Commission and the United States to swap the post of ISTC director for that
of chairman of the board, whichis currently held by the Communities.

The ability to organize a genuine follow-up to projects, and in particular the
application of results, must now be the ISTC's key operational objective.
The work must be carried on organizing effective partnerships with Western
or Japanese institutions willing and able to play a serious part in projects.

The organization of such partnerships and the introduction of rigorous
methods for the scientific management of projects will probably take up most
of the ISTÇ's time in the months ahead. Its secretariat is now developing a
more dynamic public relations policy. In the Communities, the Commission
and the Member States must continue their information and awareness

efforts, drawing on the practical examples now available.

The ISTC alone will not have the means to pursue this policy while ensuring
the survival of the projects promoted by it. Other sources of public- and
private-sector funding will have to take over from projects that have served
as an opportunity to evaluate and confirm the scientific and technical
capacities of several hundred research teams. The "ISTC brand-name"
should help those executing projects to attract funding, be it grants from the
Russian government or contracts with Russian or foreign firms.

4.2 The Communities' contribution

The Communities must therefore endeavour to organize long-term
cooperation with European industry and research institutes. To do so, the
Commission and the Member States must capitalize on the ISTC and back
the development of technologies and knowledge in the future's key sectors.
They must therefore continue and step up their efforts in respect of the ISTC,
using it to:

    - organize partnerships in civilian sectors between European organizations
and military research institutes in Russia and the NIS;

    - foster a.policy of exchanges and familiarization with practices in Russia
and the NIS'in order to gain the experience needed to carry through other
industrial and commercial schemes;

**•** [foster harmonization with a view to establishing common methods and ]
standards (health, energy, environment).

Another way of capitalizing on ISTC projects is to put them in touch with
international cooperation programmes or major projects. The ISTC's projects
in support of ITER are a typical example of this. The ISTC could step up
these efforts by involving the JCR's institutes to a greater extent, supporting
projects that international programmes would otherwise be unable to
develop.

The qualities and know-how of scientists working in military R&D centres
could also be used for the application of the international treaties on the
destruction of chemical and biological weapons or banning nuclear testing.

Under the TACIS programme, new synergies will have to be created between
ISTC and TACIS projects in the sectors of conversion, industrial

restructuring, telecommunications, nuclear safety, the environment and
energy. For example, a TACIS project aimed at restructuring a military plant
could, if that plant employed scientists specializing in the development of
weapons of mass destruction, be combined with an ISTC project in which the
plant's scientists would study applications with direct or indirect commercial
prospects, provided the project had the backing of the country's relevant
authorities.

The key elements of this policy call for: a real increase in the budget allocated
to ISTC under the TACIS programme; the promotion of cooperation among
potential European partners and civilian and military industries in the Russian
Federation and the NIS; the reinforcement of the conditions governing the
scientific management of projects; the stepping-up of the European presence
in the ISTC's secretariat by the secondment of new project managers; the
formal involvement of the Communities in Ukraine's new centre for science

and technology; the integration of the ISTC's activities into the policy on
scientific and technical cooperation with the NIS; the opening-up of
cooperation and assistance programmes (TACIS, COST, EUREKA, the
fourth framework programme etc.) to ISTC projects with a view to longterm economic partnership; lastly, the commercialization of projects' results
via patents in Europe and throughout the world.

CONCLUSION

The first two years of the ISTC's activity have been characterized by the success of
the formula. As a multilateral centre receiving, selecting, developing and executing
scientific and technical projects aimed at giving CIS scientists specializing in the
development of weapons of mass destruction an opportunity to work on civilian
activities with longer-term prospects, the ISTC has fulfilled one of its key objectives.

This success should not, however, be allowed to obscure the scale of what remains
to be done. The ISTC is entering a period of consolidation: monitoring the many
projects launched since 1994 and capitalizing on their results must be to the fore.
This is also a transition period for the teams working on these projects, who must,
with the ISTC, identify and introduce structures enabling them to commercialize
their work in the relevant sectors of the market. Ultimately the projects will have to
quit the umbrella of the ISTC, seeking backing from research institutes and industry
instead. Only when this process has been completed will the ISTC have fulfilled the
objectives of converting military scientists to civilian activities.

ISTC projects must therefore be chosen in the light of the industrial spin-offs they
can generate, private partners must be sought from the outset, and funding taken
over bilaterally by the Member States once ISTC funding comes to an end. The JRC
must become an active partner in ISTC projects. It could help tighten links with
institutes in the CIS and orient projects to the needs of industry by allowing the ISTC
to draw on its cooperation network. A real effort must be made by the ISTC's
backers to find partners, which means that the Communities must mobilize resources
commensurate with the task at hand.

**The Commission will therefore be strengthening the existing structure, bringing into**
**play, on the one hand, the political, administrative and** **financial** **part (TACIS) and, on**
**the other, the scientific and technical part by coordinating activities with industry in**
**the Member States and the relevant European bodies.**

##### ISSN 0254-1475

## COM(96) 691 final

# **DOCUMENTS**

### **EN 15 ll**

#### Catalogue number : CB-CO-96-713-EN-C ISBN 92-78-13848-7

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