25 Amendments of Jakop G. DALUNDE related to 2016/2147(INI)
Amendment 25 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
2. Recalls that the objective of H2020 is to contribute to building a society and an economy based on knowledge and innovation by leveraging additional national public and private R&D funding and by helping to attain the target of 3% of GDP for R&D by 2020; regrets that the EU invested only 2.03% of GDP in 2015, with the individual figures for different countries ranging from 0.46% to 3.26%14 ; ; encourages relevant Member States to contribute adequately to meeting the 3% EU's GDP target; notes that an overall increase of 3% would bring additionally more than 100 billion euros per year for research and innovation in Europe; recalls that two thirds of R&D funding is expected to come from industry; _________________ 14 ‘Horizon 2020, the EU framework programme for research and innovation. European Implementation Assessment’. European Parliament Research Service.
Amendment 39 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 5
Paragraph 5
5. Understands that the FP intends to incentivise industry participation in order to increase R&D spending by industry16 ; regrets that industries have not increased their share of R&D spending; concludes that the increased maximum reimbursement rates offered to large enterprises in Horizon 2020 compared with FP7 should come down in FP9; asks the Commission to assess the added value of funding for industry-driven instruments such as Joint Technology Initiatives (JTIs), which account for a large share of the budget17 , and the coherence, inclusiveness and transparency of all joint initiatives18 ; _________________ 16 Two-thirds of the 3% of GDP for R&D should come from industry. 17 In total, the 7 JTIs account for more than EUR 7 billion of the H2020 funds, ca. 10% of the whole H2020 budget and more than 13% of the actual available funding for H2020 calls (ca. EUR 8 billion/year over 7 years). 18 See Council conclusions of 29 May 2015.
Amendment 48 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 6
Paragraph 6
6. Notes that the programme budget, management and implementation is spread over 20 different bodies; queries whether this results in excessive coordination efforts and redundancy; asks the Commission to reflect on how to simplify thipropose a plan to further streamline the mechanism and simplify procedures for applicants;
Amendment 64 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 8
Paragraph 8
8. Calls on the Commission to offer a balanced mix of small, medium and large- sized projects which currently favours the latter; notes that the average budget for projects has increased under H2020 and that larger projects require participants with large financial and staff capabilities; notes that this favours large institutions, creating a problem for smaller Member States and for small participants from larger Member States; regrets that this poses obstacles for newcomers and concentrates funding in elite institutions; points to the success of the SME Instrument and calls for its extension in the future;
Amendment 68 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 8 a (new)
Paragraph 8 a (new)
8a. Acknowledges the Commission's effort to streamline the administration and reduce the time between the publication of a call and allocation of a grant; calls on the Commission to continue its endeavour to cut red tape and simplify administration; welcomes the Commission's proposal to introduce lump sum payments in order to simplify administration and auditing;
Amendment 70 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9
Paragraph 9
9. Stresses that the current low success rate of 14 % represents a negative trend compared to FP7; regrets that the cuts inflicted by EFSI have deepened this problemlaments the fact that over 25,000 high-quality proposals in the first two years of Horizon 2020 were not funded; regrets that the cuts inflicted by EFSI have deepened this problem; notes that the low success rates can be partially explained by inability of some Member States to meet their national targets for R&D;
Amendment 78 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10
Paragraph 10
10. Insists that research can be a risky investment for private investors and that funding research practice through grants is a necessity; regrets the tendency, in some cases, to move away from grants towards the use of loanscalls that grants and loans do not finance the same type of activities and support different types of beneficiaries and projects; stresses the need of continuing with grants for financing fundamental and collaborative research, in particular research performed by the academia; regrets the tendency, in some cases, to move away from grants towards the use of loans in particular when university research budgets are suffering cuts in many Member States; believes that this tendency works towards the losing of the research basis, which in turn significantly reduces the innovation potential of the European Union in the future; recognises that loans must be available for high TRL, close to market activities, within other types of instruments (e.g. EIB schemes) outside of the FP;
Amendment 90 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11
Paragraph 11
11. Underlines that several Member States are not respecting their national R&D investment commitments; calls for the earmarking of Structural Funds for R&D activities, especially investments in capacity building, infrastructure and salaries, asks that the 3% of GDP target be met, and hopes that this can be raised to 4% in the not too distant futuresuggests to consider raising it to 4% by 2030;
Amendment 101 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12
Paragraph 12
12. Confirms that ‘excellence’ should remain the key criterion across the three pillars, while noting that it is only one of the three evaluation criteria, alongside ‘impact’ and ‘quality and efficiency of the implementation’; calls for the reweighting of these criteria and invites the Commission to set out additional sub- criteria by adding ‘SSH integration and geographical balance’ under ‘impact’ and ‘project size’ under ‘efficiency of the implementation’;
Amendment 118 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 13
Paragraph 13
13. Calls for better evaluation and quality assurance by the evaluators; takes note of theurges to take into account complaints made by unsuccessful applicants that the Evaluation Summary Reports lack depth and clarity on what should be done differently in order to succeed;
Amendment 128 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 14
Paragraph 14
14. Call on the Commission to better define ‘impact’; stresses that the assessment of the impact of fundamental research projects should remain flexible and its relative weight in the evaluation procedure should be decreased; asks the Commission to check that the balance between bottom-up and top-down calls is maintained and to analyse which procedure (one or two stage) is more useful to avoid oversubscription and to create successful research;
Amendment 131 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 14 a (new)
Paragraph 14 a (new)
14a. Calls on the Commission to introduce a system that enables the applicants to evaluate the evaluators thereby enhancing the feedback loop, communication between evaluators and the applicants as well as the quality of applications;
Amendment 149 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 15
Paragraph 15
15. Calls on the Commission to continue to enhance the societal challenges approach and emphasises the importance of collaborative research; underlines the need to reinforce some societal challenges such as innovation in agriculture, migration and integration and health, especially cancer and antimicrobial resistance research plans;
Amendment 160 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16
Paragraph 16
16. Notes that synergies between funds are crucial to make investments more effective; stresses that RIS3 are an important tool to catalyse synergies setting out national and regional frameworks for R&D&I investments; regrets the presence of substantial barriers to making synergies fully operational19 such as the State Aid rules; calls on the Commission to revise the State Aid rules and to allow R&D structural fund projects to be justifiable within the FP rules of procedure; stresses the importance of following up on the country specific reports in order to identify the synergies between ERDF and FP; _________________ 19 Large research infrastructure fits within the scope and goals of the ERDF, but ERDF funds allocated nationally cannot be used to co-finance it; construction costs associated with new research infrastructures are eligible under the ERDF, but operational and staff costs are not.
Amendment 175 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 17
Paragraph 17
17. Notes that the R&I capabilities of North/South and West/East Member States are very different; recognises the European dimension to the problem of the participation gap, which must be addressed by the FP if the EU is to exploit its full potential; welcomes, in this respect, the Widening Programme; calls on the Commission to assess whether the three Widening instruments have achieved their specific objectives and to clarify the rational and general goal of the Programme, to review the indicator used to define ‘underrepresented’ countries, and to keep a dynamic list that allows Member States to be in or out depending on how their capabilities evolve; calls on the Commission to adapt or adopt new measureexisting tools to bridge this gap;
Amendment 210 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 20
Paragraph 20
20. Recalls that SSH integration means SSH research in interdisciplinary projects and not an ex-post add-on to otherwise technological projects, and that the most pressing problems faced by the EU require methodological research that is more conceptually focused on SSH; calls on the Commission either to introduce a minimum percentage dedicated to SSH funding, within each project or to create an evaluation sub-criterion that takes account of its inclusion in projects; recalls the need of involving evaluators with SSH background in order to have a proper interdisciplinary mix among the project evaluators;
Amendment 228 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 22
Paragraph 22
22. Calls on the Commission to clarify the instruments and functioning of the EIC; underlines the need to keep and strengthen the SME Instrument and the Fast Track to Innovation, and to facilitate funding for the final stages of research so that laboratory scientific innovations can develop into commercial businesses; asks the Commission to analyse also how KICs can be integrated into the EICct with the EIC and how KICs could become more transparent and involve a wider range of stakeholders;
Amendment 239 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 23
Paragraph 23
23. Welcomes initiatives which bring the private and public sectors together to stimulate research; regrets the low level of public return on public investment in some sensitive areas such as health; highlights the need for enhanced EU leadership in prioritising public research needs and a fair public return; calls on the Commission to study the possibilities of mandating non- exclusive licencing or co-ownership of IP for key projects funded by FP public grants;
Amendment 251 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 25
Paragraph 25
25. Welcomes the Open Science pilot funding as a first step towards an Open Science Cloud; recognises the relevance of e-infrastructures and supercomputing, the need for public and private sector stakeholders and civil society to be involved and the importance of citizen science in ensuring that society plays a more active part in the definition of the problems; calls for a scientific metadata structure and procedures for the generation of such data in order to feed the European OSC and ensure data exploitation; calls on the Commission and the public and private research community to explore new models that integrate private cloud resources and public e-infrastructures and the launch of citizen agendas in science and innovation; underlines that the money spent on infrastructure should not mean less money to actual research and projects; stresses the importance of not just focusing on the infrastructure but to also on the content of the cloud;
Amendment 267 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 26
Paragraph 26
26. Welcomes the success of H2020 and the 1:11 leverage factor; notes the oversubscription and the challenges that lie ahead, and calls for a budgetary increase of EUR 1020 billion for FP9;
Amendment 286 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 27
Paragraph 27
27. Calls on the Commission to separatexclude military research from civilian research in the next MFFP, since these must be two different programmes with two different budgets that do not affect the budgetary ambitions of FP9 order not to affect the budgetary ambitions of FP9 or the ambition to keep the participation rules as simple as possible;
Amendment 291 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 27 a (new)
Paragraph 27 a (new)
27a. Underlines the need, in the context of the Paris Agreement and the EU's climate objectives, to prioritise funding for climate change research and climate data collection infrastructure – particularly as the United States is considering significant budgetary cuts to US environmental research institutions; to ensure that 100% of the energy challenge funds are allocated to renewable energy, end-use energy efficiency technologies, smart grids and storage; to ensure adequate funding to research in areas such as low- input agriculture; healthy food and diversity; the sustainability dimension of transport; water management and biodiversity;
Amendment 322 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 30
Paragraph 30
30. Underlines the need for new higher excellence centres and regions and the importance of continuing to develop the ERA; calls for policies to remove barriers such as lower salaries that are faced by Eastern and Southern countries in order to avoid brain drain, andor such as restrictions on salaries for Western scholars participating in projects in lower-income member states to allow these countries to benefit from brain-gain, and calls for the excellence of the project to be prioritised over the excellence of ‘'elite’' centres, since projects should compete based on their contents and not on the name of the applicant;
Amendment 341 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 31
Paragraph 31
31. Notes that R&D investment by industry has not significantly increased; in view of the generally scarce resources for public R&D spending, calls for industrial competitiveness to be supported by differentiating between mature and emerging sectors, thus allowing larger or more mature industries to participate in projects more at their own cost or through loans; compared to start-ups and SMEs: notes, however, that differentiation between mature and emerging sectors should be accomplished in a way that does not result in the increase of the administrative burden;
Amendment 363 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 32 a (new)
Paragraph 32 a (new)
32a. Stresses the need to involve the perspective of end users in the process of assessing the innovations within the framework of the "Societal Challenges" pillar in order to identify and encourage innovations with the greatest potential to address these societal challenges;