This is very typical of the EU, and a major factor in why Europe often falls behind the US in innovation. The basic difference is that the EU believes that state funding will solve the problem of innovation, while the US relies more on capitalism and market forces.

As we saw in the Soviet era not much good comes from letting the state decide who gets the money. More recently France even tried to to make their own state-run internet, owned by France telecom. It was called Minitel.