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Parliamentary questions
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13 March 2015
E-004185-15
Question for written answer E-004185-15
to the Commission
Rule 130
Edouard Martin (S&D)

 Subject:  EFSI/Horizon 2020
 Answer in writing 

I would repeat to you the astonishment I expressed in my oral question in the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy that we could be slashing the Horizon 2020 budget by EUR 2.7 billion.

You say that the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI) is essential for innovation and that it will free up additional resources for R&D. You are making assumptions about these consequences, but you have no hard facts enabling you to check them.

Businesses — particularly larger ones — often already benefit from public funding for their R&D, but that does not stop some of them moving their operations outside Europe. However, the patents filed by them have — often or sometimes — been funded with public money. It would therefore seem wise to me to make European public support for companies' R&D — the EFSI included — conditional on the location where their innovations are employed being in Europe along with, more broadly, the resulting positive externalities. By positive externalities I mean, not just the profit generated for the company itself, but also the benefit for the social and geographic fabric in which it operates. I would be grateful for your attention to these questions and for your answer, which I hope will take account of this reflective argument.

Original language of question: FR 
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