"Dalligate" and Horizon 2020: the EU could lose more than a commissioner

Amid allegations of bribery and threats of legal action against the European Commission, the controversy surrounding the former EU health commissioner from Malta, John Dalli, has become an unwelcome distraction for budget discussions in Brussels.

“Dalligate” began last week when, on Tuesday (16 October), the European Commission released an unexpected statement that: “Commissioner John Dalli has today announced his resignation as a member of the Commission, with immediate effect.”

According to the statement, Dalli “decided to resign in order to be able to defend his reputation and that of the Commission”, following an investigation by the EU’s anti-fraud office, OLAF. The Commission said the investigation found that a Maltese entrepreneur had approached a tobacco company, Swedish Match, to request payment in exchange for influence on tobacco legislation being prepared by Dalli. “The OLAF report did not find any conclusive evidence of the direct participation of Mr Dalli but did consider that he was aware of these events,” said the Commission.

The following morning, Dalli contradicted the Commission’s version of events in a recorded interview. Dalli said the Commission president, Jose Manuel Barroso, had asked for his resignation in a face-to-face meeting on Tuesday evening. However, Dalli “refuted categorically” the allegation that he was aware of the activities between his associate and the tobacco industry. He later wrote to European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso to say he had been deprived of his right to defend himself, as he was only given 30 minutes to resign and had not been permitted to read the OLAF report.

According to Dalli, his departure may halt progress on the Tobacco Products Directive to introduce stricter requirements on cigarette packaging and flavouring, which was approaching its final stages but may now have to begin again in 2015. The mystery surrounding these events has been further fuelled by the fact that OLAF’s report has not been made public, and also by a report from three anti-tobacco lobbying agencies of targeted break-ins at their offices in Brussels within 48 hours of the resignation.

But perhaps most concerning for those in the EU capital is the announcement by Dalli at a press conference on 24 October that he may pursue legal action. “From Mr Barroso, I want vindication of my name,” said Dalli, who said he will be forming a plan of action including legal recourse.

So what is “Dalligate” likely to mean for policymakers approaching the final stages of crucial budget negotiations in Brussels?

The last time Brussels was embroiled in a scandal of this scale was over a decade ago when, in 1999, allegations of corruption against the Commission were launched by a whistle-blower’s report. The claims focused particularly on former French prime minister, Edith Cresson, who had been in office as the EU research commissioner since 1995.

Following a report by a Committee of Independent Experts, the entire Commission resigned en masse. Cresson was later charged with fraud, forgery and abuse of confidence by Belgian authorities, and in 2006, the European Court of Justice declared that Cresson acted in breach of her obligations as a European commissioner by employing a friend on the Commission’s payroll.

The Cresson affair indicates policymakers are unlikely to emerge unscathed from this latest episode. Although the Commission has confirmed that there is no evidence that Dalli acted illegally, it is well known that the tenure of staff is largely determined by political trust and respect. Barroso’s rapid eviction of Dalli may have been an attempt to avoid a repeat of mass resignation. But Dalli’s unwillingness to go quietly means this plan may backfire, and allegations of misconduct within the Commission could have disastrous consequences.

The scandal could not have come at a worse time for the Commission, as it attempts to defend its proposals for spending from 2014 to 2020 against cuts being suggested by member states. The Horizon 2020 research budget, which the Commission has set at €80 billion, is under threat from countries arguing it needs to be reduced to €60bn in line with austerity.

The outcome of this debate is largely in the hands of the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament, but the Commission must be on hand to support its proposal and advocate spending for research. It must also be seen as a trusted partner by ministers, to warrant an increase in spending as national budgets are being cut across the board.

The events of “Dalligate” mean the Commission could now be defending itself and its budget against the Council and Parliament on two fronts—a political and a moral one. This could prove costly, both for the future of the Commission and for the future of research in Europe.

A just reward

This editorial first appeared in Research Europe 352, 25.10.12.

The EU’s Nobel peace prize couldn’t be more timely

Much ridicule has been poured onto the collective heads of the Norwegian Nobel committee for its decision on 12 October to award the 2012 Nobel peace prize to the EU. But it is the detractors of the award who are making themselves look ridiculous.

The award is in fact timely. In the face of the great difficulties now facing the Eurozone, the lessons of the past are at risk of being forgotten. The EU richly deserves this prize for one, overarching achievement alone: for excising the ghosts of 20th-century Europe and rendering war between France and Germany unthinkable.

Those who ridicule the award point to recent demonstrations in Athens and Madrid as evidence for their position, but they seem to hold a peculiarly myopic view of recent history. It almost beggars belief to compare a few violent protests with tens of millions of deaths in two world wars.

At least people in the rest of the world are aware of the EU’s achievements. On page 8 of this issue, we report on the tentative moves being made by Japan to build multilateral scientific collaboration with its neighbours. Europeans may sometimes express frustration, but compared with, say, Asia or Latin America, European research has already achieved a remarkable degree of communication and common purpose.

The Nobel peace prize comes at a time when the very concept of the EU is under concerted political attack, not just from the extremes of left and right but from centrist politicians who ought to know better, such as UK Prime Minister David Cameron. Earlier this week, Cameron got into a fight with his only remaining possible best friend, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, after issuing a churlish threat to veto the EU budget for 2014-20.

Only days before, he suggested the EU saved money by thinning out its most experienced officials. And remarkably, he lectured the European Commission’s small administrative staff by referring to the UK example: “16 per cent of employees in the Commission earn over €100,000. What we have done in Britain is crack down on central administration, on costs and on the numbers of people employed, to release money for things that are more important.” But two weeks earlier, the costs of this thinning process was amply demonstrated. A multi-billion-pound bidding process for Britain’s railway system collapsed, after it emerged that the civil servants had made a hash of the figures. The scandal was a crushing indictment of what has befallen the once-proud UK civil service.

One of the lamest criticisms of the peace award is that the EU will struggle to agree who should collect it. But decisions arrived at by consensus are part of the very strength of a union—a fact that Cameron, now head of a coalition government, well knows.

Criticising the Nobel peace prize is nothing new. The prize was famously attacked when Henry Kissinger got it in 1973. And more recently, the award to President Obama was premature. However, the 2012 prize reflects well on the Norwegian Nobel committee­—and on everyone who, during the past half-century, has worked to build a Europe that is safer and more peaceful than any sane observer of the half-century before that could ever have thought possible.

Rankings don't affect EU university strategies

After our August summer break Research Europe is back in business. We will publish our next issue on 15 September, brimming with research policy news from across Europe. To give you a taster of what is to come, our guest author James Brooks is looking at international rankings, and what they mean to EU universities.

 

The publication of the 2011 Shanghai Jiaotong rankings last month showed what is already common knowledge – over the past years European universities have not managed to profoundly improve their position in international academic rankings.

We asked the universities of Sheffield, Stockholm, Utrecht and Zurich, who made it into the top 100, if they set much store by their placing. Just how important is a good placing nowadays? Crucially, are their strategies influenced by a desire to climb the table?

The short answer to that last question is “no”. The longer answer, exemplified by Kåre Bremer, president and vice chancellor of Stockholm University, which has climbed seven places over the last two years, is that institutions “would in any case promote activities leading to results improving the indicators used”.

Those indicators are all research-related, with an emphasis on science and medicine. For example, Shanghai’s assessment of quality of education is based on the number of alumni who go on to win Nobel Prizes or Fields Medals. This makes it hard to set a strategy to climb the rankings.

But even those at universities  benefitting from the focus on scientific research can be ambivalent about Shanghai and similar ranking systems. Katrien Maes, policy officer at the League of European Research Universities, says that for some institutions rankings “throw a monkey-wrench into how universities are seen, how their role in society is perceived”.

“Sometimes it goes too much towards this call on universities to be providers of direct economic benefit to societies—the total sum of what universities do is not easily equated to a number of things that can be measured,” she says.

Lesley Wilson, secretary general of the European University Association, talks favourably of the efforts made by the pilot EU ranking project U-Multirank to compile a ranking system that goes beyond assessing research output and includes measures for things like quality of teaching.  

Wilson says that “it’s very difficult, actually, to find the data that will give you a clear indication of the quality of teaching. It’s easier in a national context but the state of the art in terms of comparable data available on these issues across countries inside Europe is not wonderful”.

Rebecca Hughes, pro vice-chancellor international at the University of Sheffield, agrees that international rankings are of limited validity. Sheffield itself has dropped 15 places in the Shanghai rankings over the last 5 years. But the fall, says Hughes, is not reflective of any diminished research output.

“European universities have raised their game and therefore there’s a sort of jockeying for position in that top 100 – it’s very tight,” she says. “It’s not necessarily an indicator of a drop-off.”

Yet Hughes, like Wilson, supports a proliferation of ranking systems. “The more rankings you have that are transparent and look at different aspects of excellence, the better,” she says. “If you’ve got to have rankings, having lots of different rankings is not a bad thing.”

 

If you would like to read more from James, check out his blog my last nerve.

Europe: A soupçon of Joint Programming in the Coordination Soup

It is somewhat paradoxical that, just as the European Commission is striving to simplify access to European research programmes, Europe's research landscape is growing ever more complicated. This is a central question both for the Commission’s green paper on Research and Innovation and the next European Association of Research Managers and Administrators event in Brussels on March 2. Why has this complexity arisen, and what can be done about it?

Pfizer closure shows UK's weakening commitment to research

To lose 6,000 skilled jobs in science R&D may be regarded as a misfortune for the coalition; to lose another 2,400 and a world-class research facility looks like carelessness.

Commission to divert 400m euros from FP7 to pay for Iter

More than 400 million euros will have to be diverted from Framework 7 to cover the rising costs of Iter, the international fusion research project, a Commission proposal states.

Finding the money for Iter means that 100m euros will be taken from Framework 7 in 2012, and another 360m euros in 2013, the Commission says. The proposal is an attempt to smooth things over with member states, which are refusing to front the cash needed to keep Iter going. The European contribution to the project is expected to more than double: from 2.7 billion euros agreed in 2006 to around 7bn euros by 2013.

During a Council meeting on 12 July the member states said they would not provide the extra money, and that it should come from the existing EU budget, primarily Framework 7. Europe needs to find an additional 1.4 billion euros to pay for Iter’s construction by 2013, meaning that just under 1bn euros will still have to be found somewhere.

Sparks finally fly at the LHC

Despite false starts and warm ups, the LHC, a project that began more than 20 years ago, has finally begun to take and analyse data and the champagne is flowing in celebration.

The experiments in the more than £6 billion project, based at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, CERN, saw collisions at a record energy of 7 tera electron volts (TeV) at 1pm today. In a “gentlemen’s draw” all four experiments appeared to see the particles smashing together and flying out into the detectors at the same time, as the magnets brought the beams together to collide.

Physicists were primed for action from 4am this morning, but the sensitive safety systems, installed in the wake of the machine’s breakdown in 2008, twice aborted the attempt and reset the system before collisions could get underway.

But finally, the moment of truth came on the third attempt. It was communicated to the untrained eye only through the huge cheers erupting from the various control rooms and collaborators across the world, all linked up by webcam. But by 10 minutes later the first visual displays of colliding particles emerged, showing spaghetti strings of flying particles, tracked within 3D images of the detectors.

CERN researchers are still walking around holding laptops showing such displays and cradling them like newborn babies. The director general of CERN has even been beamed in via videoconference from Japan where he says he is eating an evening meal of crisps and wine, proudly displaying a now empty bottle of 1991 vintage red, the year the LHC got its first official go ahead.

But as the head of the CMS experiment, Guido Tonelli, said in the CMS control room just a few moments ago, the celebrations will be quick because what they are marking is that operation is now underway and it’s time for the experiments to get on with what they were designed to do.

There are now around 50 collisions happening per second within the detectors. At seven times the energy of its nearest competitor - the Tevatron at Fermilab in Illinois, US - the LHC is now by far the highest energy accelerator in the world. But, having been running since 1983, Fermilab still wins in the amount of data collected - a crucial factor in finding some of the most highly sought after particles, including the Higgs boson.

The LHC will now run until it gathers one inverse femtobarn (a measurement of the number of particle collisions) and beats that record. This is foreseen for the end of 2011, when the machine will be shutdown for a year of upgrades before, more than likely, we’ll be back to do this all over again at the optimum energy of 14 TeV.

EPO election shambles

The European Patent Organisation has for the third time failed to elect a replacement for outgoing president, Alison Brimelow.

Despite the repeated failures, and the looming date of Brimelow’s departure, the EPO’s administrative council insists the next vote, to be held on 1 March, will use the same procedures and with the same pool of candidates.

Three candidates are still vying for the role: Susanne As Sivborg, director general of the Swedish Patent Office, Benoît Battistelli, director general of the French National Institute of Industrial Property and Roland Grossenbacher, director of the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property.

Sivborg won a majority in the first vote in October, but not the 75 per cent of votes needed to win. The tables then turned in December when Battistelli had the majority of the 36 national patent offices behind him, but again not enough to win outright. News from the administrative council today is that round three of the election was once again a stalemate.

Jesper Kongstad, director general of the Danish Patent and Trademark Office, had been a fourth candidate but dropped out of the race after the second vote in December. Without new candidates, further drop-outs or some serious swings of allegiance, it’s getting harder to see how the administrative council will be able to come to an agreement.

The process to find a president began way back in July last year after Brimelow announced she would leave the institution on 30 June 2010, not completing her five-year term.

The lack of a president looks likely to affect the debate surrounding the EU Patent. The European Parliament will need the currently leaderless EPO’s input and impetus to drive the ambitious project forward.

Could the Extremely Large Telescope be built on European soil?

Jerzy Buzek, the president of the European Parliament, is backing plans to construct the European Extremely Large Telescope in the Canary Islands, Research Europe has learned.

Buzek will announce his support for the project on 3 February, paving the way for debates on whether the location for the 1 billion euro telescope should be chosen according scientific or socio-economic factors.

A European Southern Observatory team is currently considering a number of sites for the project, including the Canary Islands, home to the European Northern Observatory, and Chile, where ESO's Southern Observatory is based. The group is due to report back to the ESO council during its meeting in March, although some believe it is unlikely that a final decision will be made on the spot. Meanwhile, a delegation from the European Parliament is to visit the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on 19 February to learn more about the location.

Those backing the Canary Islands are likely to argue that the location provides tax benefits and presents an opportunity to develop the region. They may also suggest that the site is already fairly well prepared to host the 42 meter diameter segmented mirror project, whereas the Chile site might absorb more cash during the construction phase. The islands are already home to a number of astronomy projects, led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias.

However, the Chilean side may equally argue that Europe has already spent a considerable amount of money in developing Chile as a base for its astronomy work and that the E-ELT would provide the perfect complement to existing instruments in the region.

Rows over the importance of socio-economic factors when choosing locations for European projects have arisen before, including that over the site for the European Spallation Source. This ultimately went to Lund in Sweden, despite competition from less developed regions, such as Debrecen in Hungary.

Some newer member states have lobbied for research infrastructures to be used as a means to develop their regions rather than locating them in areas that already host research facilities, even if they might offer a better scientific environment. Those backing La Palma will argue that the Canary Islands fits the bill in both respects.