The strategy is intended to seize an opportunity created by toughened U.S. border policies, flat federal science funding and White House restrictions on certain lines of research.

"We want to attract the best talent in the world to Europe," Sigi Gruber told UPI's PoliSci. Gruber is a European Commission staff member working on a new Scientific Visa for researchers who choose to come to the European Union.

The visa, which will enable researchers to move and work freely anywhere in EU countries, is one of a number of inducements the commission is proposing to entice the best scientific minds to European labs and boost their economies' innovation sectors.

The inducements being crafted by the commission can be divided roughly into those aimed at improving the situation for individual scientists and those targeted at expanding and enriching the European Union's research environment to make it more appealing.

The latter, with which the commission appears to be having more luck, includes changes to facility policies, patent assistance and - most important - more and smarter funding for science.

If EU member countries follow through on their promises, that funding will increase substantially. The EU nations already have agreed to a target for research spending of 3 percent of their GDP by 2010.

This would be a huge increase from the roughly 1 percent being spent now and would put Europe on par with the levels, if not actual dollar amounts, of R&D investment by Japan and the United States.

The commission also is proposing to change fundamentally how those monies are awarded.

Science funding in Europe comes from a wide range of sources - most of them with strings attached. Companies invest directly in projects and may self-organize into large consortia to take on big contracts.

Each nation invests in its own agencies and also may choose to join other EU-wide efforts, such as the Galileo satellite project, which is supported by the commission, the European Space Agency and national pledges.

Divvying up who does what after the pledges are in, however, can become very complicated. Historically, each company and country expects to get roughly the proportion of support it contributed contracted back to its facilities or nationals. The process can make for complex negotiations, long program delays and convoluted contracts.

This time-consuming approach is unlikely to change entirely, but the Commission is proposing to allocate some EU funds to research based solely on merit.

Member nations would fund the European Research Council, but the body would retain the independence to select research projects based on peer review and not national pledges. If accepted, the ERC would act as a funding source for long-term research, much as the National Science Foundation does in the United States.

The slice of money for the ERC also would come out of a larger EU funding pie.

In the last four years, the European Union has boosted commission funding for research by over 17 percent. The proposal being discussed now would more than double the current research budget to 40 billion euros for 2006-2010 - this at a time when federal-government support for research is flat in or falling in the United States.

The money would support the ERC and other work under the Seventh Framework, the overall plan that guides EU research activities.

The Sixth Framework, which concludes next year, has seven research areas that were given special support: life sciences, information technologies, nanotechnology, aeronautics and space, food safety, sustainable development and the broader topic of citizens and governance. Biotechnology and nanotechnology also have been selected by the Bush administration for special emphasis.

Support for these subjects will continue into the Seventh Framework, said Rainer Gerold, director of Science and Society for the Commission's Research Directorate. He noted that space will be broken off into a separate area of support and security will be added as a new area.

Under the Sixth Framework, the EU moved beyond trying to coordinate national efforts and funded more than 100 EU-wide projects in, for example, stem cell research, nanoscience and new technology for rapidly readinghuman genetic information. These projects have had an impact, said experts watching the EU's efforts.

"The EU is finally getting its act together," said Robert Elde, dean of the College of Biological Sciences at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. He said the large projects have been particularly important in drawing graduate students - the worker bees of most research efforts.

Under the Seventh Framework, the EU would continue the coordination work and try to take it to the next level, said Gerold. The commission is proposing to undertake technology initiatives that would coordinate the work of industry, national bodies and EU-wide organizations to help bring targeted technologies to fruition.

For example, it will offer advice on securing EU-wide patents. The commission also would support common research infrastructures to prevent duplication.

"Nations up to now have wanted to keep (infrastructure) in their domain, but it makes sense to find common solutions," Gerold told PoliSci.

Meanwhile, U.S. researchers - who are sitting on long waiting lists to use expensive equipment - are watching with interest a proposal to open research facilities to non-EU scientists.

That does not mean, however, the European Union would fund projects of non-EU researchers. Gerold, who is involved in drafting the plan for the next phase, said the U.S. teams most likely would be expected to fund their own efforts.

The Seventh Framework, to be debated over the next 12 months, would take effect next year if approved. Despite the amount of work being put into the plan and its open-handed approach, it is not at all clear the European Union's efforts will pay off.

More top talent will be needed to make the plan successful and there are still substantial legal and cultural barriers to immigration.

Furthermore, domestic economic problems and job shortages undermine grass-roots-level support for any move to bring non-EU citizens in for high-paying positions.

Meanwhile, other nations, particularly in Asia and the Pacific Rim, are moving to recruit the best and the brightest. As a result, though the United States may gradually be losing its edge in research, it is not at all clear the EU nations will be the ones to gain.

All rights reserved. � 2005 United Press International. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by United Press International. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of United Press International.

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