The European Union plans to establish €73 billion research budget over seven years and to create industry-led "technology platforms" to consider the way of its spending.

The budget must pass verification of the European Parliament and EU national governments. But the increase of the budget to 1.14% of gross national income is not favored by a number of members.

According to the European Commission’ plan, spendings on research should be almost tripled to €10.4 billion a year starting in 2007. The suggested bidding process will enable businesses to access available funds more easily.

No wonder that business groups strongly supported the plan.

"Technology platforms can help us avoid the mistakes that have been made in the past by enabling us to arrive at a consensus on the types of research that are needed to develop the products society wants," said Johan Vanhemelrijck, secretary-general of the Brussels-based biotechnology-industry lobbying group EuropaBio.

However, the whole picture does not seem too optimistically. The promises made by European leaders four year ago to promote the EU as the world’s most energetic and competitive economy by 2010 have almost totally failed. They also have not reached the goal in the task to increase global spendings on research and development to 3% of GDP. Nowadays, the EU distributes 1.96% of its GDP to research and development while the U.S. allots 2.59%.