| Author (Corporate) | European Commission |
|---|---|
| Series Title | COM |
| Series Details | (2013) 149 final (21.3.13) |
| Publication Date | 21/03/2013 |
| Content Type | Policy-making, Report |
|
The Europe 2020 strategy and its ʻflagshipʼ initiatives focus on investments in education, research and innovation as the key to achieving smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. In this context, the Innovation Union flagship initiative, together with the Digital Agenda, Industrial Policy and Resource Efficient Europe flagships, and the Single Market Act, aim to create the best conditions for Europe's researchers and entrepreneurs to innovate. The Innovation Union flagship in particular is about creating a vibrant, innovation-based economy fuelled by ideas and creativity, capable of linking into global value chains, seizing opportunities, capturing new markets and creating high-quality jobs. Overall, progress towards setting up the policy framework for an Innovation Union has been very positive: more than 80% of the initiatives are on track. The call by the Heads of State and Government to deepen the European Research Area is being turned into concrete actions. The Commission's ʻHorizon 2020ʼ proposal for a future European research and innovation programme marks a clear break with the past by covering the entire value creation chain in one single programme. The principle of ʻsmart consolidationʼ — i.e. protecting or, if possible, increasing growth-friendly expenditures, such as R&D — is now widely accepted and is embedded in the European Semester. The business environment in Europe will become more innovation-friendly thanks to Single Market measures such as the unitary patent, faster standard setting, modernised EU procurement rules and a European passport for venture capital funds. European Innovation Partnerships are pooling resources and concentrating demand and supply-side measures on key societal challenges. While these measures still need to be implemented to start bringing results, they represent a fundamental shift in the right direction. The global position of Europe is still relatively strong. The EU is one of the world's best-performers when it comes to producing high-quality science and innovative products. It still captures the largest and a stable share (28%) of income generated in global manufacturing value chains while the US and Japan saw their shares shrinking. Since 2008, the EU has improved its innovation performance and it closed almost half of the innovation gap with the US and Japan. The EU is also keeping its strong innovation lead over Brazil, India, Russia, and China, although the latter is most markedly catching up. In addition, South Korea has almost tripled its innovation lead over the EU since 2008 and joined the US as an innovation leader. Furthermore, while public R&D spending in the EU grew throughout the crisis as governments strived to keep up their R&D investments and thus incentivise businesses to do likewise, recent data point to a potential reversal of this trend. In 2011, for the very first time since the beginning of the crisis, the total public R&D budget of the 27 EU Member States decreased slightly. The on-going economic crisis has also exposed structural weaknesses in Europe's innovation performance. The 2013 Innovation Union Scoreboard shows that the process of convergence in the innovation performance of Member States has come to a halt. As convergence was the dominant pattern since the introduction of the Scoreboard in 2001, this signals a clear risk of an increasing innovation divide. As the crisis gets longer and deeper, growth disparities between some European regions are increasing, there is an even stronger need to implement the Innovation Union swiftly and deepen it in the areas crucial to innovation, such as higher education, innovation-based entrepreneurship and demand-side measures. Momentum in fields like social innovation will also need to be maintained. Europe therefore needs fresh dynamism in its economy. Existing, traditional industries in which Europe excels need to develop new applications and new business models in order to grow and maintain their competitive advantage. Furthermore, in dynamic fields such as ICT-based businesses and in emerging sectors Europe needs more high-growth firms. This calls for an innovation-driven structural change, but Europe is at present missing out on the more radical innovations which drive and lead such structural change. Consequently, what Europe needs most in the next decade is to attract top talent and reward innovative entrepreneurs, to offer them much better opportunities to start and grow new businesses Against this background, this Communication: |
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| Source Link | Link to Main Source http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=COM:2013:149:FIN |
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| Subject Categories | Business and Industry, Culture, Education and Research |
| Countries / Regions | Europe |
