PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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5.5 The EU’s Research Frameworks: Funding for the Eco-modernist Agenda
In the previous chapter, I identified the European Science Foundation’s NECTAR
transport research network as a prime example for a group of transport experts united by
a moderate ecological modernization perspective that is currently the dominant approach
to transport policy and planning in Europe. It is important to understand, however, that
research networks of course do form themselves out of a void. Within Europe, it is
increasingly the European Union itself which shapes the member state’s transport
research agendas through its various Research Programs (RTD Framework Programs).
These programs are worth as much as 13 billion Euros in research monies over a fouryear
time span. Interestingly, the thematic makeup of these research agendas quite
clearly demonstrates the EU’s overall discursive framework of ecological modernization.
Table 5.2. provides an overview of the thematic limitations under which (sustainable)
transport and mobility research is supported under the current EU Framework Program.
As we can see, the EU’s research agenda has been both firmly set within the key terms of
growth and competitiveness and undoubtedly friendly to government-funded, yet
industry-led science.
At the end of 2002, the EU will then present the Sixth Framework Program 2002-
2006. The EU plans a complete overhaul of the overall structure such that one will not be
able to extrapolate from the Fifth Framework to the Sixth Framework program (see
CORDIS News 4-2002). Although extensively reshuffled and rearranged, the currently
emerging thematic priorities remain dominated by an ecological modernization approach.
For example, under the general heading “sustainable development, global change and
ecosystems,” for example, we find what amounts to textbook lists of ecological