The European Commission has adopted a proposal to deploy 100 M€ in 2012 and 360 M€ in 2013 from the 7th Framework Programme for Research, in order to secure the financing of ITER project as it goes forward. Besides, the Commission also proposed an initial transfer of unused funds of 400 M€ from other EU budgets to the budget financing ITER.

This proposal made by the European Commission to deploy extra financing resources to the ITER project responds to the conclusions of the Council of 12 July 2010 underlining its strong commitment to the successful completion of ITER and endorsing the project's estimated financing needs. The revision has been necessary because of substantial overall cost increases for ITER, which have more than doubled the costs for Europe from the initially expected 2.7 billion Euro.

The Council mandated the Commission to adopt the baseline for the construction of ITER (schedule, scope and costs), based on an EU contribution, mostly in kind, of 6.6 billion Euro from 2007 to 2020. Council also called for strong cost containment measures to deliver the necessary contribution within this lower budget, as opposed to the 7.2 billion Euro originally estimated by Fusion for Energy (F4E) the EU agency managing the EU's role in the project.

The Commission proposes to cover this amount of 1.4 billion Euro with unused funds from the EU budgetand redeployment of 460 million Euro from the 7th Framework Programme for Research

The European Parliament and the Council will now both have to agree on the proposal amending the current multiannual financial framework 2007-2013, but the Commission is now in a position to support "ad referendum" (subject to later agreement of the budgetary authority) the adoption of ITER Baseline at the extraordinary ITER Council meeting on 27-28 July in Cadarache.