But if every request for mutual assistance is subject to national prioritisation, and there is no shared view on how to determine what should be prioritised, the system cannot work efficiently.

8) FP6 priorities seem to correspond quite well to the national priorities of CCs, although some find that the thematic priorities of FP6 are not broad enough or include areas (e.g. aeronautics) that are not of strategic importance to their countries;

All in all, 10 out of the 15 European countries considered have assigned a particular degree of priority to gene therapy or laid down public policies along the same lines. Six countries especially (Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland) have chosen to treat gene therapy as a national priority, and four of them have drawn up national programmes to finance it.

Treating gene therapy as an express national priority or taking specific steps to promote the technology could be a means of enabling the Member States to develop scientific expertise in the gene therapy field. This is a prerequisite for subsequent commercial development and the first factor that needs to be considered. The funding provided by each country is summarised in table 5, which also gives information on national gene therapy publication output and an assessment of the size of the scientific base as well ...[+++]as indicating whether countries have general biotechnology programmes.

The Governments of the Member States and the European Commission were represented as follows: Belgium: Mr Philippe MAYSTADT Minister for Finance Denmark: Mrs Marianne JELVED Minister for Economic Affairs Germany: Mr Johann EEKHOFF State Secretary, Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs Greece: Mr Giannos PAPANTONIOU Deputy Minister for Economic Affairs Spain: Mr Pedro SOLBES MIRA Minister for Economic Affairs and Finance Mr Alfredo PASTOR BODMER State Secretary for Economic Affairs France: Mr Pierre de BOISSIEU Ambassador, Permanent Representative Ireland: Mr Bertie AHERN Minister for Finance Italy: Mr Enzo PERLOT Ambassador, Permanent Representative Luxembourg: Mr Jean-Claude JUNCKER Minister for Finance Netherlands: Mr Wim KOK Minister for ...[+++]Finance Portugal: Mr Eduardo CATROGA Minister for Finance United Kingdom: Mr Kenneth CLARKE Chancellor of the Exchequer Commission: Mr Jacques DELORS President Mr Henning CHRISTOPHERSEN Vice-President Mr Peter SCHMIDHUBER Member * * * The following also attended: Sir Nigel WICKS Chairman of the Monetary Committee PRIORITIES OF THE GREEK PRESIDENCY - PUBLIC DEBATE The Council held a public debate - retransmitted via radio/TV - on the Greek Presidency's priorities in the ECOFIN area.

In addition, the Commission and Council have increasingly heeded the COR's call for local and regional authorities to be involved more in the process of designing European strategies and in selecting national priorities and programme approval procedures.