Czech researchers drew only 10 percent of the money available from the European Union budget last year and this country was the least effective of all new member states in applying for finances from the current framework EU research program.
The newly appointed government Commissioner for European Research says the near-term outlook remains grim.
“I am very skeptical that the situation will improve soon,” said Ivan Wilhelm, adding that the main reasons for the Czechs’ drawing so little money were the complicated application procedures for the program and the limited one-year participation period. He estimated that in 2007 Czech scientists might be able to draw up to 20 percent of EU funds for their research.
The government April 24 approved a target of allocating 0.67 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to scientific research, up from the present 0.58 percent. But as the figure includes money allocated by the government and European funds, Czech scientists will still need to improve their ability to draw money from Brussels.
The new target wasn’t warmly received by many scientists. “I say, let us have the 0.58 percent of GDP, but create more transparent and unified structures to work with — then we will get all the money you want,” said Petr Matějů, president of the Institute for Social and Economic Analyses (ISEA).
Matějů further stressed the need for a more efficient structure for distributing research funds is created. He added that legislation should change as well, referring to the recently rejected amendments to the VAT law, which, if approved, would have allowed research institutes to refund their VAT expenses from the public budget.
The Czech R&D budget has increased steadily over the last six years, but it didn’t correspond to the GDP, which increased even faster, and the percentage allocated for R&D has stagnated at about 0.55 percent.
According to Wilhelm, who is to take office as Commissioner for European Research on June 1, if the full amount of money earmarked to R&D from the public budget reached Kč 18 billion (about € 639 million) in 2006, it is expected to reach Kč 36 billion in 2010. “Spending twice the present amount with good results will not be an easy task, because you also need people to do it,” Wilhelm said, pointing out that, while the Czech Republic has about 34 researchers per 10,000 inhabitants, countries like the U.S., Japan or Finland have 96, 112 and 140 researchers respectively. In Finland, for example, about 3 percent of the GDP goes to research.