The EEC's Framework Research Program embraces several collaborative R&D projects. Britain stands alone now in its opposition to the $7.5 billion budget suggested by Belgium as a compromise between a much larger figure requested by the European Commission and a smaller one proposed earlier in the year by Britain, France and West Germany.
British intransigence is founded partly upon the government's belief that the EEC should not increase R&D spending at a time of overall budgetary constraint—particularly when finances have been strained by an unforeseen rise in agricultural support prices resulting from the weakness of the U.S. dollar. But the Thatcher government also has strong reservations about the Framework program itself—despite its avowed purpose of ensuring that Europe stays even with the United States and Japan in the high-tech markets of the 1990s.
Britain's criticisms of the program are widely rejected by industrialists, who worry that delays could make obsolete ...
