ECSC technical research
The following written question, on the subject of technical research in the context of the ECSC, was submitted by the European Parliament to the Commission on 28 July 1993. Can the Commission provide information on the outcome of the announced talks with the ECSC Consultative Committee under Article 55(2)(c) of the ECSC Treaty on the desirability of allocating funds to an agreed list of technical research projects? In particular, can the Commission state what opinions, if any, were received from the employers' associations, who had until 31 March 1993 to submit them? Can the Commission also explain the nature of the relationship between certain research projects included in the list, such as those concerning an expert system for optimization of secondary steel manufacture, intelligent supervision and diagnostic systems for process control, process modelling, etc., and the relevant chapters of the successive R&D framework programmes? Prof. Ruberti, Commissioner responsible for science, research and development, gave the following answer on behalf of the Commission: With regard to the ECSC 1993 steel research programme, the Commission consulted the ECSC Consultative Committee on 2 April 1993 and obtained the approval of the Council on 24 May 1993 pursuant to Article 55(2)(c) of the ECSC Treaty. The Commission furthermore asked for the observations of the ECSC undertaking on the above programme by means of a communication sent to ECSC undertakings in accordance with Article 48 of the ECSC Treaty. No observations had been received by the deadline of 31 March 1993. The Commission subsequently adopted the abovementioned Decision on funding on 9 June 1993. The technical content of the projects concern: - Improvement of the efficiency of secondary metallurgy; - The control of production lines in order to cast special steels in accordance with schedules; - Evaluation of the use of an expert system to reduce the dimensional tolerances of continually cast products. These topics reflect the European steel industry's concerns and do not duplicate the research projects funded by the Framework Programme, which is more of a multisectoral nature.