BRUSSELS—The European Economic Community’s R&D program of collaborative work on telecommunications and other advanced technologies is now poised to go ahead following a budgetary compromise between the British government and the rest of the EEC.
Variously heralded in the British press as a retreat by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher or a vindication of her demands for restraint, a 5.2 billion ECU ($6 billion), the Framework program for the next five years has been set by the EC’s 12 nations. In what one senior diplomat described as a “nifty bit of drafting,” the governments also have agreed that plans for the program’s various projects will be drawn up as though the full 5.6 billion ECU budget agreed to in March by all but Britain were available.
Although the United Kingdom has refused formally to bridge the gap, the Thatcher government is expected to relent by the end of this year after...
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