Limits on the Community Role in External S&T 

 Relations 



The Single Act removed much of the earlier 

 ambiguity over the extent of EC legal and political 

 "competence" in both non-economic matters and foreign 

 relations. The range of matters subject to EC purview, 

 including specifically science and technology, has been 

 vastly expanded. Additionally, the purposes of such 

 undertakings to some extent can be pro-active or 

 fiiture-oriented and only tangentially related to current, 

 internal EC business. As importantly, the Commission 

 has obtained blanket approval from the Council to 

 initiate discussions with non-member countries on a 

 wide range of topics. Specific approval is still needed 

 from the Council, however, to actually negotiate formal 

 agreements that are binding on the member states. 



It is with this recently-found latitude that the 

 Commission has involved itself so intensely in pursing 

 agreements with the EFTA countries and those of 

 Eastern Europe. Particularly in the realm of science and 

 technology cooperation, however, this extension of the 

 Commission's powers and influence has proven 

 contentious. For although the Commission's mandate in 

 S&T matters extends unarguably to applied technology 

 development, in support of intemational 

 competitiveness, some of the most promising areas of 

 intemational (eg., extemal to the Community) 

 cooperation lie in basic research and in S&T training and 

 mobility. The Commission is not likely to advocate 

 significant cooperation with the U.S. or Japan, or indeed 

 with any non-EC state, in applied technology fields 

 where the Community is seeking to promote its 

 competitive position vis-a-vis those countries. The 

 member states strongly underwrite this view, and there 

 seems to exist an uneasy modus vivendi with the 

 Commission over the extent of Commission autonomy 

 in this area. 



Conmiission programs in applied technologies have 

 received the support of the Council of Ministers and the 

 member states they represent largely because these 

 programs are demonstrating how to organize and 

 promote research in ways and in scope difficult to 

 implement at the national level. The Commission offers 

 the prospect of managing European S&T on a basis 



un-restrained by narrow focus, voluntary membership, 

 statutorily-limited authority, small-or-declining 

 financing, or inadequate organizational capabilities. 

 Consequently, as successes are gained, the impetus is to 

 extend the range of research coordination. 



It is at this point that member state support becomes 

 uncertain, for potential Commission direction and 

 funding of fundamental science puts the EC squarely 

 into an arena heretofore reserved to national 

 governments. The sphere of basic research is one of the 

 last remaining areas of national sovereignty to be pulled 

 into the momentum of integration, and for several 

 member states it has become a symbol of the struggle to 

 maintain national identity, as well as policy and 

 budgetary control over national resources. Moreover, 

 basic research is something which member states have 

 fostered successfully on a national basis and which they 

 have a deep stock of expertise in supporting and 

 managing. For this reason, the prospect of a basic 

 research function lodged in the Commission has 

 encountered some resistance. However, as the national 

 governments continue to shift their domestic priorities 

 and resources increasingly to applied technology work, 

 without significantly increasing their overall civil S&T 

 budgets, that same prospect is appealing to other, 

 generally the smaller, EC members. 



What these reactions seem to point to, though not 

 directly or clearly, is that the dominant EC member 

 states wish to retain a pre-eminently bilateral pattern to 

 European cooperation with the U.S. in S&T. They are 

 not opposed to the establishment of a Commission 

 capability to represent the collective interests of the 

 Community in areas recognized as requiring multilateral 

 or global involvement (eg., environmental protection, 

 disease control, preventive medicine, global warming). 

 Yet many EC members officially support and desire 

 continuance of a system of independent, bilateral S&T 

 relations with non-members, apart from the momentum 

 of integration in all other areas of Community activities. 

 It is unlikely, however, to do more than slow the 

 evolution of a predominant Community umbrella role in 

 strategic research planning and in coordination of 

 resource development and allocation. 



14 



