Ceilidh

Michael Zey
futurist3000@aol.com

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union (news - web sites) researchers find more opportunities in the United States than at home, and European firms' money is following them there, the bloc's executive said Tuesday.

Around three-quarters of EU citizens who gained doctorates in the United States in the 1990s said they did not plan to return home, the European Commission (news - web sites) said in a report.

EU firms invested one-third more in the United States in 2000 than U.S. firms did in the European Union, the report said, adding that Europe was steadily losing out to Canada and China as a destination for U.S. investment.

Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin said the prospects of the EU meeting its own targets for increased research spending looked bleak.
"We need eight percent growth (a year) to reach the Lisbon target. But we are in the process of losing the international investment battle for research," he told reporters.

The EU's 15 member states agreed to raise research spending to three percent of the bloc's economic output by 2010 from an average 1.9 percent in 2000, when the countries met.

The Commission said it was greater opportunities for career development, not higher salaries, that were the United States' main draw for young researchers.

"The most important reasons keeping EU-born scientists and engineers abroad relate to work quality. Broader scope in position and activities and better access to leading technologies were most often cited as reasons behind plans to work abroad," the report said.
"Salary is an important consideration, but most often it is not identified as the key or deciding factor."

Busquin said he wanted to take funding for basic research out of national governments' hands to create research centers that could compete better with their U.S. counterparts. He said he would present detailed proposals early in 2004.