Research Council of 26 June cancelled
The Council of Research Ministers of the European Union, scheduled to be held on 26 June 1996, has been cancelled. The Council, which was due to decide on additional funding for the remaining years of the Fourth Framework Programme, had already been put back a week in the hope that the Heads of State and Government, meeting at the European Council in Florence the weekend before, would reach agreement on the budgetary reallocation necessary for the additional research funding. The European Council did not approve the Commission's proposal to transfer surplus funds from the agriculture budget to research, the trans-European networks and SME support measures. This was partly due to the extra expenditure incurred on support for cattle prices following the BSE crisis, which occurred after the Commission's proposals for reallocation of funds. The Commission is now likely to put forward new proposals for a more limited redistribution of funds within the budget for internal policies, but additional funding for research is unlikely to be as much as the ECU 700 million proposed.