As with the 1975 referendum, at the forefront of the campaign for Britain’s entry to the euro has been a procession of companies. Not least of these have been the French-controlled Nissan Motor Company, claiming to have been disadvantaged by the British opt-out. But behind the pro-euro industrialists is a growing band of academics who are lending their support to the project. Indicative of this is an article in The Times newspaper on 11 July, headed: "Academics get behind the euro".

The article cites a report by "academics at the universities of Durham and Northumbria" in which it is claimed that: "Signing up to the euro could bolster the chances of survival for new business start-ups…". The academics go on to assert that the "rising pound" and "higher interest rates" jeopardise fledgling companies and that the euro could "provide an important bridge to greater certainty and a longer life".

What gives the report its power is its academic origin, implying independence and objectivity. However, in this case, the independence and objectivity is questionable. Not only does the Northumberland College Internet home page bear an EU flag, so does Durham University’s web site, where there is an advertisement for the university’s "Foundation for Small and Medium Enterprise Development". According to the information given, many of its projects "are partially financed by the European Social Fund (ESF) or the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)".

What is particularly disturbing, however, is that the Times example is but the tip of a very large iceberg. It is not only the academics of Durham and Northumberland who are taking the shilling. EU influence has become pervasive throughout the higher education establishment. In this paper, the extent of this influence is explored and a thesis is developed that support for the academic community is part of the larger strategy of European integration.

Following up the visits to the Durham and Northumberland web sites, a number of other academic web sites were also visited, more or less at random. In every one of the sites visited, evidence of EU involvement was noted.

For instance, some eighty miles south of Durham is the former Leeds Polytechnic, now Leeds Metropolitan University. The university runs a Business School. One of its departments, the Policy Research Institute, proudly boasts of "prestigious clients", including the European Commission, citing DGV as its "client", the Directorate responsible for the European Social Fund.

On the other side of the Pennines, Manchester University has a dedicated "European Policy Research Unit", under its School of Government, heavily supported by EU funds. Simon Bulmer, one of the university academics, contributes to the EU’s ARENA programme, the programme of Advanced Research on the Europeanisation of the Nation State. In 1997, he delivered a paper on the "New Institutionalism", analysing the Single Market and EU Governance.

Back across the Pennines, Hull University runs the EU-funded "Euro Information Centre Humberside", one of 20 similar centres in the UK, which claims to be a "first-stop-shop for information on European policies, programmes and legislation", all dedicated to "serving" businesses. But the pride of place in Hull goes to the Centre for European Union Studies, founded in 1990 under the directorship of Professor Juliet Lodge and now under the direction of Dr Mike Burgess. Its activities are supported by the ERASMUS, TEMPUS, TACIS and Jean Monnet programmes.

Elsewhere, the trail of EU influence is evident. York University, for instance, hosts a Centre for Defence Economics, which boasts of having undertaken research for the European Commission. It also has a Centre for Experimental Economics which claims to have been financed from a number of sources, "most notably the Economic and Social Research Council of the United Kingdom and the European Commission".

Lancaster University’s Management School has received funding from a variety of EU programmes, including SOCRATES, DELTA, REMTEX, TEMPUS and EUROCIS. It received €300,000 over a two-year period from the European Commission’s Human Capital and Mobility (HCM) programme, and funding from the Training and Mobility of Researchers (TMR) and NECTAR programmes.

Aston University’s Business School in Birmingham, which proclaims itself to be "one of the largest and most successful business schools in Europe", also boasts of funding from the European Union. The London School of Economics hosts the "European Institute" and is a member of the "Community of European Management Schools", all handsomely provided with EU funds.

Reading University runs the Graduate School of European and International Studies, with a director who occupies the Jean Monnet chair, using EU funding for projects on "European Citizenship and Constitutionalism". Its Centre for International Business History is undertaking an EU funded project called CEMP (Creation of European Management Practice) which aims to judge "to what extent education, research and consulting contribute to the homogenisation of management knowledge from Europe".

With EU funding, Cranfield University in Bedfordshire is coordinating a survey into "Human Resource Management" and is undertaking research on the "Euro Human Resource Manager" in collaboration with Germany, Spain and Slovakia. It is seeking to profile the education and training needs of personnel managers and to determine perceptions of future developments in the personnel role. Its Institute for Advanced Marketing counts as its leading sponsor the European Commission.

Surrey University’s Centre for Environmental Strategy, on the other hand, is working on a project called "Clean Development Mechanism" researching greenhouse gas emissions. This is funded by DGXII of the European Commission and involves six institutions across Europe.

Even the traditional universities are not immune to EU blandishments, with the prestigious Biosciences High Level Group (BHLG) launched by DG Research boasting three Cambridge scientists amongst its 11 members: Professor Sir Tom Blundell; Prof. Derek Burke; and Prof. Anne McLaren.

Of the various programmes funded by the EU, one is particularly important - the Jean Monnet Project for "European Integration in University Studies". This is a European Commission "information project" which, it claims, is "undertaken at the request of the universities". Its aim is to "facilitate the introduction of European integration studies in universities by means of start-up subsidies". The project incorporates four elements: the Jean Monnet Chairs and "ad personam" Jean Monnet Chairs; the permanent course on European Integration; European Modules; and Jean Monnet European Centres of Excellence.

The "chairs" encompass a "symbolic term corresponding to a full-time teaching post, entirely devoted to the teaching of European Integration". The permanent courses offer undergraduate and postgraduate studies on European integration while the "modules" comprise a short programme of studies concentrating entirely on the same subject. The "centres of excellence" are "a label including scientific and human resources dealing with European Integration studies and research within the university and/or at a regional level".

Funds are awarded on a co-financing basis for a start-up period of three years, in exchange for a commitment from the university to teach on European integration for a period of at least seven years. The project is managed by the European University Council for the Jean Monnet Project, composed of representatives of university institutions elected by the Confederation of European Union Rectors’ Conferences and representatives of professors specialising in European Integration Studies, who are elected by the European Communities Studies Association (ECSA).

In the UK, there are nine established "centres of excellence": the University of Bath, headed by Dr Alan Butt Philip; Queens University Belfast, headed by Prof. Michael Smith; the University of Birmingham, headed by Dr Gillian Ryan; the University of Sussex at Brighton, headed by Prof. Helen Wallace; the University of Essex at Colchester, headed by Prof. Emil Kirchner; the University of Glasgow, headed by Noreen Burrows; the University of Hull, headed by Dr Michael Burgess; the University of Leeds, headed by Prof. Juliet Lodge; and the London School of Economics, headed by Prof. Howard Machin.

Recent additions are the University of Wales at Aberystwyth, headed by Dr Thomas Christiansen; the University of Kent at Canterbury, headed by Dr Clive Church; Loughborough University, headed by Prof. Michael Hilton Smith; and the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, headed by Dr Ella Ritchie, bringing the total to thirteen.

Additionally, there are 95 established Jean Monnet "chairs" with six additions in 2000, bringing the total to 101. The year 2000 batch comprises Prof. Rene Leboutte at the University of Aberdeen; Dr Klaus Larres and Prof. Antje Wiener at Queens University Belfast; Dr Joanne Wright at the Royal Holloway College at Egham; Prof. Pamela Barnes at the University of Lincolnshire and Humberside, in Lincoln; Prof. Francis Snyder at Birkbeck College, University of London; and Dr Ruggero at the University of Manchester.

Of the universities offering courses in European integration and related subjects, 102 are listed in the European Commission directory, one in every major city and in many towns, ranging from Aberdeen in the north of Scotland, through Edinburgh and Glasgow, Dundee, Preston, Newcastle upon Tyne, Liverpool, Manchester, Bradford, Leeds, Hull, Sheffield, Derby, Coventry, Leicester, Nottingham, Oxford, Cambridge, Luton, London, Bath, Newport, Cardiff, Aberystwyth, Southampton, Plymouth and Belfast. Over 300 academics are employed on these courses, including 86 professors.

Altogether, the Jean Monnet project is huge. It has led to the setting up of 2319 new university teaching projects throughout Europe, all dealing with "European integration issues". There are 47 European Centres of Excellence, 491 Jean Monnet Chairs, 800 Permanent Courses and 641 European Modules. The UK appears to be disproportionately highly represented.

While the Jean Monnet Project is specific to "European Integration", the major source of EU research funding is channelled through the Community research programme, called CORDIS, managed by DG Research, formerly DG XII. The acronym stands for Community Research and Development Information Service. It is currently in its fifth "framework programme" (FP5) for which a total of €14.96 billion has been allocated for the period 1998-2002, consuming just short of five percent of the €87 billion Community budget. The scale is vast, with 12,000 organisations involved in 1995, growing to 28,000 in 1998.

CORDIS itself was conceived to "help solve problems and to respond to major socio-economic challenges such as increasing Europe’s industrial competitiveness, job creation and improving the quality of life for European citizens". The programme’s main objectives are: "strengthening the scientific and technological basis of EU industry and encouraging it to become more competitive at an international level"; and "contributing to other EU policies (health, environment, consumer protection, economic and social cohesion, etc)". Although funds are disbursed to a wide variety of agencies, higher education is a major beneficiary.

The programme’s primary aim is: "promoting Europe’s scientific Community (setting up networks and promoting researchers’ training and mobility)". It comprises four "thematic programmes" covering a series of "well defined problems" and three "horizontal programmes", responding to "common needs across all research areas".

The four thematic programmes are: "Quality of Life and Management of Living Resources"; "Promoting a user-friendly information society" (IST); "Competitive and sustainable growth" (GROWTH); and "Energy, environment and sustainable development" (EESD). The horizontal programmes are: "confirming the international role of community research" (INCO II); promotion of innovation and encouragement of SME participation" (INNOVATION-SMES); and "improving human research potential and the socio-economic research base" (IMPROVING).

The "Quality of Life and Management of Living Resources" funding covers 307 projects worth €494 million. Calls for new proposals elicited 808 responses from academic institutions in the year 2000. Competition is fierce, as the projects are highly rewarding. The average EU contribution for successful projects stands at €1.6 million. Interestingly, under this programme comes: "Support for research infrastructures", the main objective of which is to "encourage and stimulate infrastructure operators (and users) to make the most effective use of Europe’s major research facilities and resources".

The indicative budget of the information technology (IST) programme is €3.6 billion, managed by DG Information Society, aimed at, inter alia, making the information society "cohesive and socially inclusive" and improving Europe’s basic research infrastructure. GROWTH boasts a budget of €2.705 billion, with the clear targets of "increasing economic growth and creating new jobs in Europe… and supporting Community policies that enable competitive and sustainable development". EESD takes €2.125 billion, of which €1.083 billion is for Environment and Sustainable Development and €1.042 billion is for the Energy sub-programme.

Also under the CORDIS programmes comes a group of projects entitled: "Raising public awareness". One such is OPUS, standing for "Optimising Public Understanding of Science and Technology in Europe". This started on 1 January 2000 and has a budget of €358,000 spread over 36 months. One of the "partners" is the University of East London.

Another such project is ENSCOT – European Science Communication Teachers Network. It also started on 1 January 2000, with a budget of €420,000 spread over 36 months. The coordinating organisation is the University College London, the project head Dr Steven Miller. Partners include the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, in London, and the Open University.

Other "public awareness" projects include the "GMP Network" which, at a cost of €500,000 (with an EU of contribution €360,000), is tasked to establish a "European knowledge base open to interested parties for the purpose of discussing and communicating key issues on genetically modified plants". Then there is PANS – Public Awareness on Nuclear Science in Europe, costing €165,000; and ISCOM – Improving Science Communication in Museums and Science Centres. Some €405,000 of EU money (out of a project cost of €593,000) is to be devoted to "creating a science communicators’ forum for exchanging and diffusing science centre/museums best practice". A project partner is Prof. John Durant of the Science Museum in London.

Prof. Vivian Moses, of the Division of Life Sciences, King’s College London, is leading a two-year project on "EUROBIOTECHEDUCATION" aimed at "exploring, surveying and evaluating educational measures aimed at the general public in the area of biotechnology". The cost is €268,000.

Then there are associated schemes. One is "Mathematics in everyday life" costing €283,000, devoted to raising public awareness for mathematics, bringing together several European mathematics science centres, including one in London. Another is "Bringing Pupils to Science and Technology", allocating €240,000 from EU funds to "improve the exchange of knowledge, know-how and expertise amongst participating European science centres".

There are also a number of schemes based around European Science and Technology Week – 6-12^th November 20000, costing in total €1,190,000 (€929,000 of EU funds). Pride of place amongst these schemes must be the "European Project on the Sun", devoting €526,000 to "making the European citizens aware of the beneficial impact of the sun on their daily lives". The project will "mobilise the public in the construction of a ‘mock-up’ spaceship", the modules of which will be joined together with a central module during the European Science and Technology Week". This will "demonstrate visually the way in which European collaboration really works".

Participating organisations in these schemes include the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the Progress Educational Trust in London, headed by Prof. Marcus Pembury, and the University of Wales at Bangor.

Also under the CORDIS programme is TSER – Targeted Socio-Economic Research and the Key action. This provides funding for research dealing with "Cities, local areas & exclusion/integration", "Migrants, ethnic minorities & social exclusion/ integration" and "gender/women".

One project funded by this scheme is research into "European Citizenship and the Social and Political Integration of the European Union" - EURCIT, coordinated by Prof. Richard Bellamy of the University of Reading, with Dr Castiglione of the University of Exeter as one of the partners. Universities in Germany, Portugal, Italy and Austria are also involved. This "network" aims to "assess the extent to which European citizenship could and does promote the identification of Europeans with the institutions of the Union". One of its specific objectives is: "Developing a conceptual framework for the analysis of the evolution and impact of European Citizenship…". "Citizenship" is regarded as "primarily a legal and political status" and the aim is to "produce an overlapping consensus on certain principles of citizenship that could be applied across European states as a whole".

Managed by DG XI, Environment, Nuclear Safety and Civil Protection, is a separate programme called "LIFE", "a financial instrument for three major areas of action: Environment, Nature and Third Countries". This project also attracts national funding from participating countries. Now in its third phase, as "LIFE III", the Community budget is €640 million for the period 2000 to 2004. As with CORDIS, it spawns a host of subsidiary projects, all of bewildering complexity. One such, entitled "Coupling of CORNAIR data to cost-effective emission reduction strategies based on critical thresholds" has four EU countries participating.

Crucially, one of the key objectives of the Environment programme is "preparatory actions to support community legislation and policies".

The Education and Culture DG also has its own research programme, aptly named "Culture 2000". Its objectives are to: "make best use of a European area within which the free movement of people, services and capital are insured (sic); promote cultural heritage of European significance and the creation of new forms of cultural expression; and contribute to the democratisation of culture, to the particular benefit of young people and the socially and economically disadvantaged".

Other sources of funding are the "European Documentation Centres". These are part of the "Network of European Relays", providing local sources of EU information. EDCs are "collections of material published and deposited by the European Union in academic centres throughout the world". They are supported by the European Commission and provide access to EU documentation, including privileged access to EU databases, in order to "promote and develop study in the field of European Integration". In the UK, there are 43 such centres.

The locations are: Aberdeen, Dundee, and Edinburgh Universities; Durham, Newcastle upon Tyne; Bradford, Hull, Leeds Metropolitan, Leeds and Sheffield Universities; Lancaster, Manchester and Salford Universities; Leicester and Loughborough Universities; Birmingham University and the Universities of Central England, Warwickshire, Coventry, Keele and Wolverhampton; the University of Cambridge, Essex and East Anglia Universities; Wye College in Ashford, Sussex, Kent and Surrey Universities; the Queen Mary & Westerfield College, the University of North London and the London School of Economics; the Bodleian Law Library in the University of Oxford, Reading, Southampton and Portsmouth; the Universities of Bath, Bristol and Exeter; the University of Wales at Aberystwyth and Cardiff; Queens University in Belfast and the University of Ulster in Coleraine.

Apart from the Jean Monnet Project, separate grants from DG Education and Culture are available "for the support of European integration activities organised by academic institutions and other organisations", with a budget for the year 2000 of €1.5 million. The maximum sum available for any single project is €100,000, representing 50 percent of eligible costs. Priority is being given to projects on enlargement, the euro and those which "have the potential to mobilise, publicise and disseminate information".

Additionally, the EU funds a large number of academic conferences, typical of which is its programme of 12 "dialogue workshops" launched in May 2000, the first dealing with "Technology, Economic Integration and Social Cohesion", at a prestige venue in Brussels. The programme aims to "improve two-way communication…" with a view to "…supporting policy formulation and implementation… providing evidence and arguments for informed public debate" – propaganda by any measure. Another example is the conference on "The European Social Fund – recent developments and future prospects", organised by the School for Policy Studies of the University of Bristol in April 2000.

Under the IMPROVING programme alone, the Commission lists 11 pages of EU funded "High-Level Scientific Conferences" for the year 2000, amounting to nearly 300 events. Over the last four years, it co-financed more than 1,000 EuroConferences, EuroSummer Schools and EuroLabCourses under the "Training and Mobility of Researchers" programme. The "Human Potential Programme" has a budget of €35 million to support events in the scientific field over the next four years,, involving 486 of Europe’s "top scientists", from which some 100,000 researchers are expected to "benefit".

EU funding is not just disbursed to university departments. Individuals in higher education can take advantage of a number of schemes. Best known of these is the Socrates-Erasmus programme, which provides funding for exchange visits for students throughout the EU. The programme aims to improve the quality and the "European dimension" of higher education. Additionally, there is the new European "Youth" programme, which includes in its aims the creation of "…a greater sense of solidarity among young people", and teaching them "active involvement in the European ideal".

Then there are the Leonardo mobility projects. Leonardo II enables 30,000 "Europeans" to participate in trans-national placements or exchanges. Currently, only the 15 member states and the three European Economic Area countries (Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway) can participate. However, the new succession countries are now being allowed to join, raising the number of countries to 30 and the budget to €69.5 million.

Less well known are the Jean Monnet Fellowships, which are awarded for "the pursuit or continuance of post-doctoral research with no heavy teaching obligations". A stipend of €1,200 to €2,000 is offered for academics to carry out research in the European University Institute in Florence, in one of three major categories: comparative research in a European perspective; research on the European Union or on a topic of interest for the development of Europe; or fundamental research, providing it relates to an innovative subject of importance in one of the disciplines contributing to the development of Europe’s cultural and academic heritage.

Postgraduate grants of €898 a month for up to three years are also available to study law, economics, history or social and political science. This programme is hailed as "one of the largest structured doctoral programmes in the world in these disciplines". Jobs, in fact, are the main draw for the academic, with research posts on offer from a variety of Community sources. For instance, The CORDIS programme is currently offering a number of temporary research posts, on three year contracts.

But research is not the only opportunity. For each research programme, there must be managers and these are recruited from the academic community. The CORDIS programmes is offering "Expert Monitoring" posts – experts to monitor the fifth framework programme – and "Expert Candidature" posts, the people who evaluate proposals received in response to calls for research proposals. In all, about 5,000 academics – of which nearly 500 are British - are retained by the Commission to evaluate CORDIS programmes, the list running to 97 closely printed pages.

Additionally, there is a range of prestigious academic awards, such as the Descartes and Archimedes Prizes. The former is awarded for "outstanding scientific and technological achievements resulting from European collaborative research", while the Archimedes Prize recognises undergraduate students in European higher education institutes who have developed original scientific ideas or concepts in areas which advance European science. Each prize is worth €50,000, from a budget of €450,000.

A key organisation for the academic community is UKRO (UK Research Office) based in Brussels. It provides information on "European Union funded opportunities for research and higher education", accessible only to subscribers. Such information is carefully guarded, with each newsletter bearing the stern injunction: "Information from this publication must not be forwarded or copied outside of your institution".

The main Euro-academic association is the European Communities Studies Association (ESCA), which provides a dedicated web-site called "ECSA-Net" for like-minded academics, styled as an "interactive communications network for academics working in the field of European Integration Studies". It is funded by the European Union. Amongst other services, it provides the "Euristote" university database. This lists over 22,000 references to university research documents, reporting work being carried out or completed since 1960, in 350 universities in Europe and the rest of the world, all on the topic of European integration. It also hosts the "European Integration online Papers" Internet database and is a founding member of the European Research Papers Archive (ERPA).

ESCA’s affiliated organisation in the UK is the University Association for Contemporary European Studies with a secretariat in King’s College in the Strand. Its president is Prof. Stephen George of the Department of Politics at Sheffield University.

Further opportunities for association between academics exist with the Trans European Policy Studies Association (TEPSA) which claims to be an "independent organisation… aiming at the promotion of international research on European Integration". Its British board member is Professor Andrew Duff, former member of the Federal Trust for Education and Research. He is now an MEP and constitutional affairs spokesman for the European Liberal Democrats. The Trust gives its address as Dean Bradley House in London, home of the European Movement, an EU funded lobby organisation.

Academic members of the Trust’s council include Professor Ian Begg, professor of international economics at the Business School, South Bank University, Dr Michael Burgess, Director of the Centre for European Studies at the University of Hull and Professor Jorg Monar, Director of the Centre for European Politics and Institutions, at the University of Leicester. Other members include John Stevens, former MEP and currently leader of the Pro-Euro Conservative Party, and Ernest Wistricht, former director of the European Movement.

Then there is EGOS, the European Group for Organisational Studies, which describes itself as a "professional association of teachers and researchers acting as a network for the advancement of organisational knowledge" but it declares that one of its important aims is "…to be a potential partner for the EU authorities concerned with academic and educational topics". The organisation "follows up the political dimension of academic work within Europe according to programmes and other activities initiated by the European Union" and aims to "…contribute to the design of future programmes on a European level".

Determining the amount of funding received by higher education in the UK as a result of EU programmes is not straightforward. A feature of the funding system is that there is no single programme or mechanism of disbursement. Money flows from a variety of programmes and Commission directorates. It can be paid in the form of grants to individual students or researchers, or for specific activities or research projects. Much of the money is paid to collaborative ventures, where several institutions are involved, and most of the programmes require co-financing or individual contributions, so multiplying the value of projects.

Nevertheless, it is known that the two major programmes, CORDIS – over four years - and the research and technological development projects from Structural Funds between 1989 and 1999, contribute €14.96 billion €12 billion respectively. If sums from other programmes are added, a reasonable estimate for the total annual EU input into higher education is in the order of €5 billion.

As a rough but fairly secure estimate, it appears that the UK attracts about ten percent of contracts from research programmes, which amounts to some €500 million of EU funds. When co-financing is added, the sum doubles to €1 billion. Thus £600 million annually is flowing into the UK higher education system as a result of EU projects. On the generous estimate of £60,000 per academic employed, this would amount to an EU-funded cadre of some 10,000 personnel.

In January 2000, the Commission began to draw together the various strands of research policy, announcing its proposals for a single "European Research Area" (COM (2000) 6 final). It paid lip-service to concerns that Europe was being left behind in the international technological race, with the difference between research spending in the US and Europe amounting to €60 billion in 1998, as against €12 billion in 1992, with the trade balance in high tech products showing a deficit of €20 billion a year in Europe over the past ten years.

In so doing, the Commission lamented the "fragmentation, isolation and compartmentalisation of national research efforts and systems" and concluded that "decompartmentalisation and better integration of Europe’s scientific and technological area is an indispensable condition for invigorating research in Europe". It added, "The European market of supply and demand in knowledge and technology still remains largely to be created. For it to develop and function a real European research policy needs to be defined".

The Commission also noted that "research plays a central role in the implementation of public policy and is also at the heart of the policy-making process".

Proposals for the ERA are offered under six "heads", and specific targets include "networking centres of excellence and creation of virtual centres", "defining a European approach to research infrastructures" and encouraging "closer relations between European organisations". In the latter context, the Commission notes that a series of organisations for "European scientific and technological cooperation" have been created and now wants to see priority given to "establishing the conditions for political consultation between these organisation". It wants to introduce a "European dimension" into scientific careers and looks to the "integration of the scientific communities of western and eastern Europe".

At the core of the proposal, however, is the Commission’s expressed need for "More coordinated implementation of national and European research programmes. It wants to "…play the role of initiator and catalyst by providing the member states with the logistical means and legal instruments best suited to coordinating research activities undertaken in Europe".

Financial support for academic institutions is generally accepted as legitimate public expenditure. However – in theory at least - such funding should always be free from political "strings". Despite this, all EU funding is essentially political in nature, and overtly so. This is clearly revealed in an interview with Vivian Reding, the Commissioner for Education and Culture who, in late 1999, told the Commission-funded "Eur-op News" that those who take part in the activities supported by EU programmes "are much more likely to realise how much Europe has to offer them".

This statement is essentially a reiteration of the findings of a research project on the "Economic benefits and support for membership in the EU", funded by the EU and published in the Journal of Public Policy in 1996. Two academics, Christopher Anderson and Shawn Reichert, found that: "not only did individuals living in countries that benefit more from EU membership display higher levels of support for their country’s participation in the EU", but "…those individuals who benefit personally are also more supportive of the integration project".

As to specific projects, the Jean Monnet Project, in being directed to the study of European Integration, is clearly promoting a more direct political agenda. So too is the European Document Centre network, provided as it is for the study of European integration.

The CORDIS programme is also overtly political. Ostensibly directed at scientific research, the real agenda is to "promote Europe’s scientific Community…". Similarly, other programmes, in promoting "Support for research infrastructures", designed to "encourage and stimulate infrastructure operators (and users) to make the most effective use of Europe’s major research facilities and resources", are overtly political. Even the apparently innocuous Socrates-Erasmus programme is mainly directed at increasing awareness of the "European dimension", again a political objective.

As regards the "European Research Area", this initiative is fully in accordance with other EU policy directions. After the Common Agriculture Policy, the Common Fisheries Policy, the Common Defence and Security Policy, Schengen with its single frontier, the single legal space and, latterly, the single European sky, the idea of a single research area with a single research policy – and one main source of funding – is entirely in accordance with the more general policy of integration, leading to a single European state.

On the web site of DG Research, the Commission purports to argue otherwise, stating on its "frequently asked questions" page that "…the EU does not and does not wish to monopolise all Europe-wide collaboration by any means…". It then refers to a number of bilateral and multi-lateral cooperations, the examples of which are all, in one way or another, EU-funded. The Commission then continues, "EU RTD policy has played an increasingly central and catalytic role… It is a logical follow-up to the widely expressed need for tighter European union that its role should become increasingly important".

What the Commission is doing is putting the "cart before the horse", in a thoroughly disingenuous argument. On the one hand, it uses the research programme as a driver for EU integration – taking over responsibilities from member states. Then, as it assumes greater control of the programme, it claims that its role should become "increasingly important".

What is has been doing, through the generous application of funds provided by member states, is three things. Firstly, it is increasing the awareness of "Europe", by adopting high profile research projects for which it can claim credit, "bringing Europe closer to its citizens". Secondly, it is funding the Europeanisation of science. It is creating a pan-European scientific community, beholden to the EU from which it gains its sustenance, supplanting the communities of the member states. The target here is nothing short of the integration of the European "intelligentsia". Thirdly, it is creating a cadre of evangelists to propagandise for the "project" in the classrooms and lecture theatres of the nation’s universities – and beyond.

Additionally, much of the funding the EU obtains from member states has been (and is) devoted to developing and supporting its own public policy initiatives, to the extent that the universities have been co-opted into the heart of the EU policy-making process. With involvement comes "ownership" so many in the university system will be supportive of the EU simply because they are involved in some way in building the "project". The academics are no longer by-standers; they have been roped in as participants.

It is, therefore, significant that the EU concentrates much of the money it obtains in three areas, those dealing with politics, economics/business and European studies. Effectively, using member states’ money, it has purchased within major universities its own "cells", embracing the politicians and the economists of the future who are being taught by academics imbued with the integration ethos.

The ERA is the final step in the process, where the EU seeks to "coordinate" the entire European research effort. But, as any observer of management processes will confirm, it is not possible to coordinate without first having control.

In the meantime, the flow of EU controlled money has ensured that, far from being independent and objective, major sectors in higher education have been bought and paid for. Much of academia has become a fifth column, serving the interests of the Union in pursuit of the integration of Europe, using other peoples’ money.

ends

21 July 2000

 

Top