In January 1974, the Council of Ministers of the (then) European Economic Community decided to establish a common policy for research. In July 1974, the Berg letter was published in Nature and Science, and led to the Asilomar Conference in February of the following year. 1974 thus offers a convenient starting point for looking back over the events of the first quarter-century of modern biotechnology, and forward to likely developments over the second.
The European Commission participated in the regulatory debate of the post-Asilomar years, a now classic example of applying the “precautionary principle”—start tough, and adapt as you learn. In parallel,the European Commission staff labored 6 years to persuade the Member countries to agree (1981), a first, 15 million ECU program of research and technological development in biomolecular engineering, 1982–1986. A series of biotech programs followed, of rapidly expanding scale, and in the mid-80s were joined by the launch of agro-industrial research programs with a similar rapid growth curve. These two strands, and the strand of biomedical research, were fused within the Fifth Framework Program into a single 5-year program on “Quality of Life and Management of Living Resources”, launched in 1999, with a budget of 2.4 billion euro.
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