European Parliament in support of Research and Innovation
In its plenary session of October 26th 2016 at Strasbourg, the European Parliament (EP) expressed its position with respect to the Draft Budget for the European Union for 2017. The EP reiterates its commitment to research and growth supported by appropriate funding. It advocates the reversal of all budget cuts suggested by the Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN) and full recovery of cuts made to H2020 in favour of ESFI (European Fund for Strategic Investment). The EP hence comes to the rescue of the EU budget for research and consequently decided to restore all cuts made by the Council. The text adopted by the EP Plenary Session increases commitments to 160.7 billion Euro and payments to 136.8 billion Euro and proposes to increase the highly successful Marie Curie, European Research Council and Erasmus+ programs above the level of the Draft Budget proposed by the Commission. The EP adopted a resolution on the mid term revision of the MFF (Multiannual Financial Framework) with, in particular, the top-ups proposed by the EC for H2020 and Erasmus+ (400 million Euro each). The 400 million Euro for H2020 are to be equally distributed among the following budgetary lines: ERC, Spreading Excellence and Widening Participation, the European Open Science Cloud and the European Innovation Council.
