Leading from the front

UK scientists agree money should be spent on European projects. But why are they not doing more to lead the challenge against the Americans? Steve Farrar reports.

It split the last Conservative government, divided the business community and trade unions and has been cast by some as a threat to our national identity.

But despite occasional murmurs of discontent that large European collaborative programmes such as the European Space Agency or Cern divert precious funds away from indigenous science, it seems that Europe may be one of the few issues that unites the UK's scientific community.

In fact, when Academia Europaea, an independent organisation that promotes research, learning and education across Europe, tried to organise a debate for last week's British Association Festival of Science on this very subject, they were unable to find anyone to put up a strong argument against Europe.

This is in part due to the fundamental, collaborative nature of science, according to Sir Harold Kroto, Nobel chemistry laureate. "I suspect science is the only truly international pursuit," said Sir Harold.

But worse than this, from the Europhobe perspective, it turns out that the UK is benefiting disproportionately from improving links with the rest of the continent.

Enric Banda, secretary general of the European Science Foundation and a former minister in the Spanish government, argued that because British science was second in its productivity and reputation only to the United States, it naturally had the most to gain from collaborations.

"The UK should take the leadership here rather than look at Europe as a threat, and perhaps then Europe could face the US," he said.

Mr Banda said that joint European ventures that had UK involvement tended to enjoy much greater returns than those that did not, and that British scientists also wrote the best proposals for research funding, though this may be down to English being our native tongue.

He added that the UK also attracted far more brilliant young scientists from across Europe to work in universities and institutes here than were prepared to move in the opposite direction.

Peter Fletcher, head of industrial and international liaison for the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, said that Office of Science and Technology statistics backed up this claim. "We are a training centre for the rest of Europe, but why are we not sending British postdocs to Europe?" he asked.

International collaborations on the scale of Cern, which focuses the efforts of more than 4,000 European scientists and 1,000 from elsewhere in the world on understanding the fundamental structure of matter, are vital if the largest questions in science are to be tackled.

Despite the drain on national resources, it is clear that scientists benefit greatly by pooling their efforts. Roger Cashmore, research director of Cern, said: "We have to get together on this large scale to be able to do these experiments - I don't believe there are any national boundaries to science."

Professor Cashmore added that the effort to keep Cern's scientists in contact with each other around the globe had led to the laboratory's greatest contribution to mankind - the spin-off development of the world wide web.

Nevertheless, he felt that domestic sources of science funding were a crucial element alongside European and international initiatives to ensure smaller projects were not neglected.

Sir Harold warned that despite the successes of Cern and ESA, meeting the large payments required by such huge organisations had in the past led to the coffers being empty for domestic projects.

He said that during the 1980s this led to a situation for two years when there was no money for chemistry projects. He conceded, however, that this was more of a domestic problem than a European one and that such large projects deserved funding.

Sir Harold's biggest gripe was the Brussels bureaucracy involved in setting up collaborative ventures.

"There is a ridiculous amount of paperwork involved and I'm sure much of the suspicion about Europe is about the cost of the bureaucracy. But my feeling is that anything that creates collaboration is going to be very positive for both Europe and science as a whole."

UK contributions to European

science 1998-99, from a total budget of Pounds 1.47

billion:

Pounds 383 million to the European Union's DGXII - science, research and development programme

Pounds 64 million to Cern, the European laboratory for

particle physics

Pounds 130 million to the European Space Agency

Pounds 9 million (1997-98) to Institut Laue Langevin, a shared neutron source in France

Pounds 6 million (1997-98) to the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in France

Pounds 4 million (1997-98) to the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Germany

Pounds 2 million (1997-98) to the Ocean Drilling

Programme.

The European Union estimates UK institutions receive a little below the nation's Pounds 383 million contribution directly back in the form of research grants. The total European science budget of Pounds 2.28

billion in 1999 was:

Pounds 365 million for life sciences

Pounds 565 million for information

technology

Pounds 426 million for engineering

Pounds 147 million for environmental research

Pounds 147 million for energy

Pounds 204 million for Euratom's nuclear technology.

Other projects, including international collaborations, training and innovation schemes get Pounds 421 million