Blair repeats call for more R&D investment, and requests study on EU universities
On the eve of an informal European Council taking place in his home country, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair called once again for more EU spending on research and development (R&D), and also for a strategy to make Europe's universities more competitive. The current Council President said that it is time to get Europe moving again, and to get it moving in the right direction. Mr Blair has three broad aims for the remaining months of his presidency: to get an agreement on the right direction for the EU and its economy; to agree on a new set of priority areas reflecting that direction; and to get agreement on a budget that mirrors these priorities. One of these priorities must be R&D and innovation, Mr Blair told MEPs in Strasbourg: 'Research, development and innovation should take a larger share of the EU budget, but there should also be a better coordinated approach between the Member States by setting up a European Research Council along the lines of America's National Science Foundation. This would give us a chance to form world-beating companies in the technologies of the future.' One such technology of the future should be biotechnology, where Europe should be a world leader, said Mr Blair. The Prime Minister promised a paper on this and other research priorities for Europe. Turning to universities, Mr Blair called for immediate action to improve the competitiveness of Europe's institutions, saying: 'Our university sector is not competing in the way it needs to with America. You have got China and India developing their university sector in an extraordinary way, and yet if you look at the overall, not just the spending on our university sector, our tertiary education sector, but also where we are getting the value added in the connection between business and university, we don't have anything like the same possibilities in Europe that they have in other parts of the world.' Mr Blair asked the Commission to investigate why this is, and to report back in a year on the challenges facing European universities. The analysis should also address competitiveness, in particular in relation to US universities, sustaining public-private partnerships, and establishing graduate schools. Another priority for the UK Prime Minister is energy. He called for a common energy policy to replace the 'haphazard and random way energy needs and energy priorities are simply determined in each country according to its needs'. One of his proposals for sustainable energy, however - nuclear power - was not popular with some MEPs. The Council President promised to do his 'level best' to reach an agreement on all priorities with his EU counterparts before the end of the UK Presidency.
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