PURPOSE: to renew the Agreement for scientific and technological cooperation between the European Community and Brazil.
PROPOSED ACT: Council Decision.
ROLE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT: Council may adopt the act only if Parliament has given its consent to the act.
BACKGROUND: the Agreement for scientific and technological cooperation between the European Community and Brazil entered into force on 7 August 2007.
The Agreement provides that it ‘shall initially be valid for a period of five years and may be renewed by agreement between the Parties after evaluation during the penultimate year of each subsequent renewal period’.
The Agreement was last renewed in 2012 and remains in force until 7 August 2017, unless the Parties renew it for the next five-year period.
Since the Agreement was last renewed, Brazil has made significant advances in its science, technology and innovation (STI) policy, which has contributed to the institutional strengthening of the STI system.
Brazil remains at the forefront of research in the field of agriculture, as well as in tropical and infectious diseases. It is also a world-class player in the fields of information and communication technologies, nanotechnologies and energy and it hosts some of Latin America’s top universities. These research areas are of interest to the European Union.
The links between Brazil and the EU in science, technology and innovation have been growing through intense cooperation at EU and Member State level.
Cooperation between the EU and the Brazilian research community led, among other results, to the development of a new drug for Chagas disease (already registered with the Food and Drug Administration to start clinical testing) and to the development of a new biomass pre-treatment process for advanced bioethanol (allowing the set-up of the first commercial advanced bioethanol plant in Europe).
It is, therefore, in the EU’s interest to renew the Agreement for scientific and technological cooperation between the European Community and Brazil for a new period of five years.
This is the purpose of this proposal.
CONTENT: with this proposal for a decision, it is planned to call on the Council to renew the Agreement on cooperation in the field of science and technology between the European Community and Brazil for a further period of 5 years.
The content of the renewed Agreement is identical to that of the current Agreement.
Cooperation would be maintained for the period from 8 August 2017 to 7 August 2022.
BUDGETARY IMPACT: the implementation of the Agreement entails a financial envelope of EUR 345 000 from 2017 to 2022 for expenditure on human and administrative resources.