Europe plays innovation catch-up
Published: 07 Dec 2005 12:05 GMT
...as the USA, their impact is even more significant. Our second aim therefore is to stimulate investment in ICT research and innovation as the seedbed of Europe's future economic success.
The third set of priorities emphasises the role of ICT in delivering benefits to the citizen. A more socially inclusive European Information Society will also be a more efficient and productive one. ICT is crucial to improving health care, learning, government services, and environmental quality, among others
What measures is the Commission taking to promote the development and exploitation of these technologies by European companies?
What we are trying to do is increase the participation of industry in research with new initiatives such as the European Technology Platform (ETP). This is a link between industry and researchers, which works two ways by developing a strategic research agenda and helping us to define our strategic objectives and goals.
The next step is that the participants in the programmes find industrial and academic partners through the platforms and they develop relationships that are important for European projects. This leads to innovation because industry has been involved throughout.
What specific areas of European technology research are being funded by the European Commission?
The fundamental aims of all Community support for research and development are to strengthen industry's scientific and technological base, enhance its international competitiveness and promote research supporting other EU policies. These aims are realised via multi-annual research framework programmes.
In keeping with the EU's "Lisbon" strategy for growth and jobs, the Sixth Research Framework Programme brought new objectives and ambitions, particularly the creation of a European Research Area in which research was more coordinated across the EU.
The European Commission also has a number of broad initiatives, such as the recently launched "Digital Libraries" Initiative, which will support and promote the development and use of new technologies, especially in the ICT area. The Digital Libraries Initiative is a strategy to make Europe's written and audiovisual heritage available on the Internet. A strategy that will not only entail digitising of over 2.5 billion books, and millions of hours of film and audio, but will also involve developing grid computing technologies and solving the problems connected with long term digital preservation.
As a percentage of total R&D expenditure, ICT accounts for only 18 percent in Europe as opposed to 34 percent in US and 35 percent in Japan. What can the EC do to rectify this poor performance?
This is a really major concern for us. The Commission has proposed a substantial increase in research funding at European level and within the collaborative research programme that we administer, 30 percent is going to ICT, a much higher percentage than the average. If that had been accepted by EU member states it would have been a major step forward, but now we are now talking about a 25 percent increase, not a 100 percent one, because the EU budget has not been ratified. But it is still an increase and on a European level you can count upon a positive response, even if it is not as positive as we had hoped.
We need to follow the US lead and get more research investment in companies. Hopefully, by involving them more in our research programmes, we can encourage them to put more money into research since we will be financing 50 percent of it. This way we should get a much higher level of industrial research investment in Europe.
But this can only be done through national policies and we have a target that 3 percent of GDP should go to research and an even higher level on the ICT side. For that...
Previous
Did you find this article useful?
266 out of 525 people found this useful
- Share this article:
