Comparative analysis of the Czech Republic participation in the FP6 and EURATOM programme
Overall CR participation in FP6 projects
CR participation in the FP6 priorities and EURATOM
CR participation in the FP6 with regard to projects types
CR participation in the FP6 with regard to type of participants
Czech industry participation in the FP6
In the following communication we bring the analysis of the Czech Republic participation in the 6th Framework Programme (FP6) and EURATOM for the period going from December 17th, 2002 (publication of the first calls) to May 31st, 2007, which means that we report on the statistics for the projects which ended up at this date theirs negotiations with the European Commission (EC) and received the EC funding.
Our communication is based on the new database of the projects “E-CORDA”, which was made accessible by EC to the selected national administration staff on July 2007. Although the FP6 was closed at the end of 2006, we should take into account the fact that the database contains the projects with the funding from EC in the amount of 15.811 billions € which represents about 90 % of the FP6 budget. For the complete communication about all projects realized in the frame of the FP6 we miss the data about the distribution of the last 10 % of the FP6 budget. The total FP6 budget was adopted in the amount of 19.1 billions €.
The ECHO magazine brought in the past reports about the Czech Republic participation in the FP6. Those analyses treated about the distribution of the “first sixth”, “first third” and “first half” of the FP6 budget. It showed that the conclusions of the international statistical comparison of the CR participation based on those data didn’t differ significantly. In consequence we can suppose that the data about the projects which will acquire the last 10 % of the FP6 budget funding will not change significantly the view of the CR participation in the FP6. It means that, regardless of the incompleteness of the data, we can consider the conclusions about the CR participation in the FP6 presented in this report as definitive.
We should point out in advance the methodology adopted in the elaboration of this communication about the CR participation in the FP6, which consists mainly in the comparison of the participation of Czech teams with the participation of teams from other EU countries. The comparative statistics are indicated mostly explicitly, either for all 27 EU member states or the Czech Republic is compared with the aggregated data for EU-15 (“old member states”) or for EU-11 (“new member states” without CR), which enlarged EU on May 2004 (i. e., without CR, 9 countries CY, EE, HU, LT, LV, MT, PL, SI, SK) and on January 2007 (BG, RO).
Overall CR participation in FP6 projects
15 811 millions € from the FP6 budget were distributed among 8 861 projects which concluded their contract negotiations, 69 162 participants (not always different, some teams participate on several projects) will take part on the realization of those projects. 1015 Czech teams (again not necessary different) participate on the realization of 830 projects; they contracted an aggregate amount of 124.48 mil. €. Czech participants represent 1.46 % of all participants and the amount contracted by Czech teams represents around 0.78 % of the amount distributed from the FP6 budget until now. Average budget of Czech participants is around 184.3 thousand € and at average Czech team asks for 123.0 thousand €. Graph no. 1 show the international comparison of the number of participations of EU-27 states in the funded projects.
We can see in the graph no. 1 that we find the biggest amount of participations in the contracted projects first in Germany (DE), then in Great Britain (UK), France (FR), Italy (IT) and so on. There is an obvious strong correlation between the number of participations and the population. The column part of the graph no. 1 shows, for comparison reason, the number of each country participations for 1 million inhabitants, the states are lined up in descending order in accordance with this indicator. Czech Republic has 58.2 participations for 1 million inhabitants, which range it on the 21st rank among EU-27 states or on the 6th rank among new member states. In both cases, this is a stable rank occupied by Czech Republic after the distribution of the first sixth, first third and first half of the FP6 budget.
EUROSTAT data from January 2007 indicates that the Czech Republic spent on science and research more than 1.2 % of its GDP per year between 2002-2006. In the graph we can find the Czech Republic more or less in the middle of the 11 states group (HU, ES, IT, PT, CZ, LT, LV, SK, BG, PL, RO) investing, with the exception of Italy, less then 1 % of GDP in their science and research system. Since the analysis of the relation between the number of participations and the percentage spent on science and research exceeds the purpose of this communication, we will raise only a presumption that “present comparison indicates that the overall number of participations of Czech teams should be higher to allow the Czech Republic to join the countries spending more than 1.2 % of their GDP on science and research”.
In the following text we will analyse the institutional structure of teams participating on the realization of the FP6 projects. We can divide the participants, and it’s the roughest of divisions, according to their role in the consortium, into coordinators (of the project consortium) and other participants. In the graph no. 2 we can see two columns for every EU-27 member state. First, white column represents the percentage of the coordinators of given member state from all EU-27 coordinators. Grey column represents the per centage of the coordinators of given member state from all participants of this state. The member states are ranked in accordance with this percentage. It appears immediately from the grey columns, that all countries are ranked between Ireland and Czech Republic. While there are 18.8 % of coordinators among Irish teams, there are only 3.4 % of coordinators among Czech teams. It means that the Czech teams have the lowest ambition to coordinate the international project consortium among EU-27 member states. One reason is without any doubt the fact that the coordination activities require a specific expertise and the Czech Republic don’t strive for developing this expertise. It’s worth to note that Czech coordinators represents 0.4 % of EU-27 coordinators, which is significantly under the percentage corresponding to a state of our size: Hungarian coordinators outnumber Czech coordinators 3 times (1.2 % of EU-27) and AT, SE, GR, BE have more then 3 % of EU-27 coordinators.
Framework Programme should not in any case substitute the national research programs, to a certain extend, it is complementary to them. A long-term experience of the countries enlarging progressively the existing European Community shows that the frequency of national participation grows until the part of national teams representation settles around the percentage of the national population in the Community. The curves show a growth of the number of teams from new member states in years 2003-2005, growth which didn’t pursue in years 2006-2007. In any case it’s obvious that the participation of the teams from new member states doesn’t correspond by far to the proportion of their national populations. Deeper analysis shows that in particular “the bigger new member states” have an opportunity to enhance their participation. Czech Republic itself shows a positive development of the trend of its participation. The CR population represents around 2.1 % of EU-27 population, thus we can see on the graph that CR has a possibility to increase the part of its teams among EU-27 teams. We cannot consider the decline of year 2007 as significant, in regard to the incompleteness of the statistics for this year.
However the number of national participants correlates positively with national population, a lot of other factors influence significantly the quality of their participation. For certain we can include among these factors an ability to activate an appropriate capacity (and thus acquire an appropriate part of the FP budget). The very indicator “participation in project” doesn’t indicate the importance and the significance of the participation, which is described better by average total cost of participation and average EC funding for Czech teams. The table no. 1 shows the basic comparison of Czech Republic with average of EU-11 and with average of EU-15.
We can see that average budget of Czech participant is higher then average budget of a team from EU-11. At the same time the average budget of Czech participant is around a half of the average budget of EU-15 participant. The same proportions stand for average EC funding for a participant of the FP6 project. The last column of the Table 1 shows that the new member states have the highest proportion of the average EC funding from their average budget, it’s almost three quarters, for the Czech Republic this proportion is two thirds and for EU-15 it’s even less then two thirds. These differences are to a large extent due to the structure of the participants, to the instrument (funding scheme) of the project and to the rules determining the amount of funding. Broadly speaking, the higher is the percentage of teams from industry in the FP6 projects, the lower is the percent of the EC funding of their participation (while universities can obtain a funding up to 100 per cent of their eligible cost, industry can obtain only 50 per cent).
| Average budget € | EC contribution € | Share of EC contribution on the budget | |
| CZ | 184 277 | 123 004 | 66.7 % |
| EU11 | 151 045 | 109 504 | 72.5 % |
| EU15 | 396 228 | 255 366 | 64.4% |
The Czech Republic occupies the 17th rank among EU-27 by its rate of contracted funding or 3rd rank (after PL and HU) among new member states. Column graph no. 4 shows a classification of EU-27 states according to the rate of obtained funding.
There is a generally accepted opinion that the percentage of funding obtained by the teams of each member state shouldn’t significantly differ from the member state contribution to FP budget. At the same time the percentage of the member state contribution to FP budget is done by the percentage of member state contribution to EC budget. For example German contribution to EC budget and at the same time to FP budget went around 20-21 %. We can see in graph no. 4 that EC funding of German teams actually reached 21 %.
For EU-15 states it’s indeed possible to demonstrate a very strong link between the percentage of contribution to FP budget from given member state and the percentage of aggregate EC funding for its teams. In the case of new member states this link is looser because they pay their full contribution to EC only from 2005. In 2003 the new member states have not been the EU members yet and they have participated in the FP6 only by providing 70 % of their regular contribution to FP budget, in 2004 new member states have paid only two third of their regular contribution to EU budget (an adequate proportion of this contribution went to the FP6 budget) because they became the members only in May 2004. Some new member states experienced a relatively fast growth of the percentage of their contribution to EU budget as a consequence of the growth of their GDP. Concerning the Czech Republic, its contribution in 2003 was around 0.6 % of the FP6 budget, in 2005 CR covered 1 % of EU budget and for 2006 CR should pay 1.02 %. We should thus consider that thorough the FP6 duration Czech teams should contract each year more then 0.6 % (because the CR contribution was always superior to this value).
Various curves of the graph no. 5 show a dynamic of the participation in the light of the proportion of requested funding. Here again it appears immediately that new members states increase constantly their part on the amount of EC funding for the FP6 participants. If in 2003 EU-12 countries acquired only 3.5 % of total EU-27 funding, in 2006 it was 6.6 %. Nevertheless old member states acquire constantly more then 93% of all EU-27 resources, which could seem as disproportional. Here we should note a strong correlation between the percentage of acquired funding and the member state contribution to FP budget (no matter if it was the lump sum contribution as it was the case of BG and RO in the years 2003-2006 or the percentage of their contribution to aggregate EU budget).
The CR also experienced a very fast growth of the per cent of acquired funding. More detailed analysis shows that the percentage of acquired funding follows very closely the percentage of the CR contribution to the EU budget (or to the FP6 budget in 2003-2004). We can find the reason of the fact that Czech teams didn’t acquire until now a funding corresponding to Czech contribution to the FP6 budget in tiny reaction of Czech teams at the beginning of the FP6, i. e. in 2003. In any case it’s obvious that while the part of new member states on FP budget grows, the part of EU-15 states constantly decline.
CR participation in the FP6 priorities and in EURATOM
Column graph no. 6 shows an aggregate numbers of participations in FP6 thematic priorities and in EURATOM programme, where CR has altogether 653 participants applying for 92.3 million €. The biggest number of Czech teams participates in 6th thematic priority SD (Sustainable Development), where CR has 164 participations. Priority ICT (Information society technologies) is on second place with 146 participations, then follows priorities LIFE (Life sciences, genomics and biotechnology for health) and NMP (Nanotechnologies and nano-sciences, knowledge based multifunctional materials and new production processes and devices) with identical number of 77 participations. In 4th priority A-S (Aeronautics and space) there are 58 participations, in 5th priority Food (Food quality and safety) 45 participations and in 7th priority CIT (Citizens and governance in a knowledge-based society) there are 34 participations. In EURATOM there are 52 participations, in this case we should consider that participants in this programme have typically multiple participation, one institution participate more then 30 times.
Broken line in graph no. 6 shows the distribution of the aggregate contracted funding (92.3 million €) on participants in various thematic priorities. The biggest funding acquired the participants in ICT projects (26.32 millions €) followed by thematic priority SD (17.6 millions €) and priority LIFE (13.56 million €). Respective position of the top of column and broken line mark indicate an average funding in different domains. “The most expensive” in this sense are projects in ICT, A-S and LIFE priorities, where average participant applied for 180 thousand €. On the contrary “the cheapest” projects we find in CIT priority and in EURATOM, whose participants applied for 80 thousand € at average. We should note the large differences between the budgets disposable for different priorities (for example the budget of ICT priority is ten times more important then the budget of CIT priority etc.). In this respect the acquired funding doesn’t reflect the success rate of Czech participants, which appears rather from the part they received from aggregate priority funding (see graph no. 8).
Graph no. 7 shows the distribution of 359 participations and 37.19 millions € acquired in different horizontal priorities. We note the very positive fact that CR increased, with 89 participations, the number of participations in priority HRM (Human resources and mobility, Marie Curie Actions) focused on the mobility of researchers. Projects focused on the mobility of researchers facilitate not only the aquisition of new qualifications – difficult to obtain by other way – through the research fellowships, but the contacts often leads in new research projects. Last but not least, local institution has the possibility to draw very talented foreign researchers. Other undisputable positive fact of the participation in horizontal programmes is a relatively high participation of small and medium entreprises (SME’s) with 88 participations. Third highest participation of Czech teams is in the projects “Research for policy support” (Polsup) with 57 participations. On the contrary the participation of Czech institutions in ERA-NET projects – destined to the creation of the research programmes with their own calls – seems less positive. In this case it seems that Czech Republic don’t dispose suitable legislation facilitating the allocation of public funds on creation of common budget with foreign partners.
A scale on the right side of this graph indicates the aggregate amount of required funding in various horizontal priorities. The highest funding will get the participants of the projects supporting mobility (11.44 million €). On the other side, a program Coherent development of policies (CohDevPol) acquire the tiniest funding (0.4 million €). Respective position of the marks for obtained funding and the column height indicates again the average acquired funding, maximal for the projects focused on Construction of new infrastructures (RInfra) achieving almost 170 thousand €, on the second place we can find with 128 thousand € the average funding for one research fellowship, which is almost double in comparison with the average funding for the participation of SME’s (75 thousands €).
Graph no. 8 shows the percentage of participants from Czech teams in particular thematic priorities and horizontal programmes of FP6, eventually the percentage of funding for Czech participants received in up to now contracted projects. We can read it as a rate of success of Czech teams in FP6. It is obvious that the highest representation of the CR is in the EURATOM programme, where the Czech teams’ participation represents 4.94 % of EU-27 teams participation and Czech participants request 2.3 % of the total funding distributed by the EURATOM community for the projects solutions.
7th priority CIT and 4th priority A-S are on the second and third place. In both these priorities the Czech participation overreaches 2 % of EU-27 participation and the requested funding overreaches 1 % of the amount requested by the EU-27 teams. We note high participation in the 6th priority SD, where the Czech participation is exactly 2 % of EU-27 participation and Czech teams request 0.91 % of the total funding for all the EU-27 teams (that is much more than the CR average contribution to the FP6 budget in 2003-2006).
In the thematic priorities 1st LIFE, 2nd IST, 3rd NMP (their budget in total creates approx. ¾ of all thematic priorities’ budget), the Czech participation is lower both in the percentage of participation among the EU-27 teams and the percentage of requested funding.
The lowest participation of Czech teams was in the 2nd priority IST it represented only 1.14 % of the total EU-27 participation. CR requests the lowest aggregate funding in the 1st priority LIFE that represents 0.71 % of the funding for all the EU-27 teams. In the 3rd priority NMP and 5th priority Food the Czech teams request the funding around 0.8 % of the funding requested by EU-27 teams in these priorities.
When we take into account the horizontal priorities the CR is most successful in the programme CohDevPol. This priority’s budget represents only a small part of the total FP6 budget and only seven Czech teams participate in it. As a significant success we might see the Czech participation in SMEs priority where they compose 2.1 % of all EU-27 participation and they request the funding of 1.8 % of the total EC funding in this priority. High comparable part of distributed funding (1.4 %) is also requested by Czech participants in the priority “Research and Innovation”. On the other hand it is obvious that there should be higher participation in the HRM programme where the Czech participation represents 1.3 % of EU-27 participation and the requested funding is around 0.7 % of the total funding requested by all EU-27 teams in this priority.
CR participation in the FP6 with regard to projects types
The results reached in particular projects themselves will become the indicator of importance and benefits of the FP6 participation. Nevertheless it is obvious in advance that through the participation in research oriented projects, i.e. integrated projects (IP) and specific target research projects (STREP), eventually networks of excellence (NoE), it is possible to reach results with crucial importance and benefits than in the type of projects “coordination actions” (CA) or “specific support actions” (SSA). The column graph no. 9 shows the division of participants from the CR, EU-15 and EU-11 in different types of FP6 projects.
We can see that the projects composition of EU-15 and EU-11 differs. While from EU-15 the highest percentage of teams participate in STREP and IP projects, from EU-11 the participation in STREP projects is also the most common, but on the second place EU-11 teams are mostly engaged in SSA projects, i.e. projects with support character. There is also a big difference in the case of integrated projects: in those there is a 26.5 % participation of EU-15 teams (same as in STREP projects) while new member states do reach only 15 % participation. We note that in main types of projects, i.e. IP, NoE and STREP, the structure of participation of CR resembles to the structure of EU-15 while the structure of participation of EU-11 differs from EU-15 in these types of projects.
Though the Czech participants eventually participants from new member states participate less in HRM projects than EU-15 teams it is unfavourable that the Czech participation in these projects lags behind the other EU-11. At the same time we note that the SMEs sector reacts very actively to the FP6 calls: CR has higher percentage of participation in CRAFT projects than EU-15 or EU-11.
Graph no. 10 compares the division of the total funding the CR, EU-11 and EU-15 request for its participation in particular type of projects. We can found out from the mentioned comparison, that the highest percentage of the total funding will get Czech participants of integrated projects. On the second place there are STREP projects. It is positive that Czech teams are initiative mainly in those projects that represent main instruments of FP6. On the third place there are networks of excellence, big projects again that should lead to virtual research institutions building and overcome limitations that the “stone” R&D institutions have to face.
Meanwhile we might see that the EU-11 countries get from SSA projects around 12 % of the total funding of their participation in FP6 what is approx. double times high share that the CR or EU-15 countries get. But if we consider that the SSA projects represent (according to graph no. 9) the second most common type of projects that these countries participate in, it is obvious that from the view of “return of resources that the countries contribute to FP6 budget” the participation in projects oriented primarily on research (i.e. IP and STREP) is crucial.
CR participation in the FP6 with regard to type of participants
The database allows us to see the most detailed division of teams according to their prevailing activities. That is why we present the structure of FP6 participants in this kind of division: universities, research institutions, industrial participants, others and N/A category (i.e. teams that did not mention their prevailing activity).
The columns in the graph no. 11 allow us to compare the structure of Czech participants with corresponding structures from EU-15 and EU-11. It is obvious that the CR has lower percentage of its participants from universities than EU-15 or EU-11. In comparison with EU-15 and EU-11 the CR has the highest percentage of participants from research institutions. It is an implication of quite high participations of Academy of Science institutes.
Let’s note that the distribution of requested funding to particular types of FP6 participants does not differ very much from the distribution of participation. Czech universities the same way as research institutions request 35 % from the total funding that the EC grants to Czech teams.
While the Czech industry requests 17 % of the total funding for the CR, EU-15 countries industry requests 19 % of the total funding of all EU-15 teams. On the other hand the industrial participants from EU-11 requests 9.4 % of the total funding for EU-11 teams, what is half the amount of EU-15.
We can conclude that the Czech industry participation is evidently closer to the structure of EU-15 participants.
Czech industry participation in FP6
Since the EC funding does not correspond with the total budget of the industrial participant very clearly (EC contributes to the research activities up to 50 %, demonstration activities up to 35 %, other activities can be supported up to 100 %),it is better to characterize each state’s industry participation by the total participants budget (than the EC funding).
At the end we present the participation of the Czech industry through four comparative statistics for EU-27 – absolute number of industry participants from each member state, their share on the total budget of all EU-27 industry participants (graph no. 12). This graph shows the EU-27 countries matched according to their share on the aggregate budget of all industrial participants from EU-27. In total there are 11823 teams from EU-27 participating on FP6 projects and from them 162 industrial partners from the CR. The total budget of industrial teams in EU-27 reaches 5.3 milliards €. The total budget of Czech industrial teams is 41.8 millions. € i.e. 0.79 % of the total budget of industrial partners. The CR occupies the 13th rank among EU-27 countries and advances all the new member states and three states from EU-15 (PT, IE, and LU).
We can expect that the industrial partners’ budgets will be in average higher than the budgets of universities and academic teams. It is confirmed by data in Table 2. Meanwhile we can see that while an average Czech industrial participant invests around 40 % more money than the average budget of all Czech participants in his activity, in EU-15 it is 18 % more and in new member states (without CR) just 12 % more.
| average budget (€) | proportion of budgets | |
total | industrial partner | ||
CZ | 184277 | 258299 | 1,40 |
EU-11 | 151045 | 169461 | 1,12 |
EU-15 | 396228 | 468885 | 1,18 |
Particular sectors of Czech industry participate in FP6 differently and they contribute towards shown position of Czech industry in European research with different scale. The higher part of graph no. 13 shows the percentage the Czech industrial teams obtained from the amount, all the industrial teams from EU-27 got from EC in total. The lower part of the graph shows similar average, just the base is created by the total funding thenew member states obtained (EU-12). Thematic priorities 4 and 6 are at this time divided according to their main subpriorities.
Both the graphs show that the Czech industry does not participate in priority Space and there is a small participation in priorities LIFE, Food, Energy and at the same time we can note that there is also a low Czech industrial participation in EURATOM programme where the CR is very successful. On the other hand the Czech industry is very successful in the 6th priority Global and 4th A-S even their budget is too small. We can not ignore the fact that 60 % from the EU-11 industrial teams funding in the A-S research. Meanwhile we note that in the priority of global climate changes the Czech industry received 50 % of the total funding of EU-11.
Conclusion
Till the end of May 2007 the EC distributed approx. 90 % of the planned FP6 budget. EC funds 8861 FP6 projects. 1012 Czech teams participate in 830 projects. The analyses show that according to the number of participation accruing to each country per 1 million inhabitants the CR occupies the 22nd rank in EU-27 and is among those countries that invest less percentage of their GDP than the CR (their investments are not higher than 1 % of GDP while the CR had invested 1,25 % of GDP during FP6). The statistics also shows that the CR has the lowest level of coordinators from all EU-27 member states.
In regard of the total funding the CR occupies the 17th rank among EU-27. The analysis shows that the Czech participation in FP6 will be higher than its participation in FP5 (1999 -2002). If in FP5 the Czech teams contracted the total funding of 68 millions €, everything leads to the fact that in FP6 the funding of Czech teams will overreach 125 millions €.
Even the intensity of participation (measured by the number of Czech teams participants or their funding) in contracted projects had evident rising tendency it is obvious that in three thematic priorities (LIFE, IST, NMP) where there are allocated around ¾ of the total budget of all FP6 thematic priorities there should be reached higher level of participation. The same way as in FP5, it is being confirmed that the Czech teams are successful in projects in the area of sustainable development and in the EURATOM programme. Up to now situation shows that in comparison with the FP5 the support of mobility programme gets better.
Contrary from the other new member states the Czech teams participate more in more challenging research projects (integrated projects, STREP, networks of excellence) with almost the same share as EU-15 teams. If the participation of universities is lower than in EU-15 or in EU-11, the participation of the Czech industry is quite high: according to the aggregate budget of industrial partners the CR occupies the 1st rank among the new member states and the 13th rank among EU-27. The participation of the Czech industry in the priorities aeronautics and global climates changes was very successful.
CR has doubtless the potential for increase of its participation in the just started FP7. It is obvious from the analysis that it is necessary to create conditions mainly for better participation of universities.