A Community framework for R & D : with evidence / Select Committee on the European Communities.

  • Great Britain. Parliament. House of Lords. Select Committee on the European Communities
Date:
1990
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: A Community framework for R & D : with evidence / Select Committee on the European Communities. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    24. In trying to ascertain what happens, the Committee came upon the two related principles: “additionality” and “attribution”. The principle of additionality as it relates to the Structural Funds is enshrined in Community law'!: “In establishing and implementing the Community support frameworks, the Commission and the Member States shall ensure that the increase in the appropriations for the funds provided for in Article 12(2) of Regulation (EEC) No. 2052/88 has a genuine additional economic impact in the regions concerned and results in at least an equivalent increase in the total volume of official or similar (Community and national) structural aid in the Member State concerned, taking into account the macro-economic circumstances in which the funding takes place.” 25. This provision is intended to ensure that receipts from Community funds (in this case, under the Structural Funds) are in addition to public expenditure, not in lieu of it. Nor should the allocation of Community funds lead to a cut in public expenditure. The Court of Auditors keeps a watchful eye on additionality and, in its Report for 1988’ (Section 10) considered the particular case of funding for transport infrastructure, concluding (Section 10.12): “In the FR of Germany, Ireland and the United Kingdom, however, the Court’s enquiries showed that there was no demonstrable link between the receipt of Community funds and higher spending on transport infrastructure projects.” 26. The principle of “attribution” on the other hand is not enshrined in Community law and its interpretation is therefore more subjective. It appears from the evidence (summarised in paragraphs 54-64) that the Treasury attributes funds received under Community R & D pro- grammes to individual Departmental Budgets and, in the following annual public expenditure round, adjusts those budgets to take account of these Community funds. Each Department has to decide for itself what to do to make the adjustments required by the Treasury in order to take account of Community funds. Thus it can happen that a body which receives Community support may find, if it also receives support from a central Government Department, that in the year following the receipt of Community funds the support it receives from a central Government Department is reduced. This in turn can have an effect as far as “additionality” is concerned: such a reduction can mean that the Community funds received are not fully additional to those national Government funds available to individual applicants—and may not be additional at all. 27. Once again, the Court of Auditors provides an interesting parallel in the case of transport infrastructure’ and in particular for Department of Transport road projects: “The Community contribution is in practice appropriated in aid of the general Department of Transport vote. In consequence it does not stimulate any increase in the roads programme, but acts only as a subvention to the general funds of the Department ...”. ' Article 9 of Regulation 4253/88 (19 December 1988), a Regulation which co-ordinates the activities of the Structural Funds. ? OJ C 312, 12.12.89. > Ibid, section 10.13(a).
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