Innovation: The exit to the crisis

Europe needs to once again become a motor of innovation

While EU countries tried cutting financing for research and innovation during negotiations for the 2015 EU budget in the autumn, experts insisted that investments in these areas were essential to providing Europe with an alternative to the crisis and high unemployment. At a private level, investment in research and development by European companies in 2013, at 2.6 percent, was below the world average of 4.9 percent and lagged far behind companies based in the US and Japan, according to a recent report by the European Commission.

Europe’s innovators, basked in the warm, shiny spirit of Silicon Valley, were in Brussels on December 1 for the popular TEDx Brussels 2014 conference held at the art deco salons of Bozar.

Twenty high-level speakers from the fields of science, business and politics treated more than 2,000 influential stakeholders to a showcase of “the next big things.”

Speakers interviewed by Euranet Plus all came to a unanimous conclusion: Europe needs to support research and innovation as key investments to boost the EU’s competitiveness and growth.

Christopher Pissarides, the 2010 laureate of Nobel Prize in economics, suggested that Europe may have invested too much effort in the financial sector and not enough “on the real economy.”

“If you think of the money that has been put into recapitalizing the banking sector and you think on how cautious now banks are, when the rest of the economy is desperate for investment, I think one would be right in thinking that maybe we put too much emphasis on the financial side and not enough on the real side of the economy,” he said.

Pissarides said EU institutions needed more investment and more political union in order to be able to compete with the US and Asia.

“Be generous with investments. Our infrastructures are crumbling, specially transport and energy,” he said. “And the most controversial perhaps, if we have a closer political union and more involvement in decision making, then we are going to have better prospect in Europe to develop the whole continent as a single economy and therefore being able to compete with the United States, but even more importantly with the Asian giants emerging now.”

Lack of investment in research

In this sense, investment at the private level is also essential. But according to a report published by the European Commission in December, even if investment in research and development by EU companies grew by 2.6 percent in 2013, it would still be below the 2013 world average (4.9 percent) and far below investment in the US (5 percent) and Japan (5.5 percent).

Jonathan Coleman, a leading research scientist in nanotechnology and materials science, said that along with more investment, Europe also needed a greater engagement with the research and the industry sectors.

“Many academics don’t know what industry requires and industry doesn’t know what academics require,” he pointed out. “And if you go into collaboration with industry and neither side knows what the other side wants or needs, then you are bound to fail.”

He also suggested that even if European scientists are doing great, Europe could learn a lesson from the US on commercialisation.

“We have to learn, I think, a little bit more about commercialisation to bridge the gap between basic research that in many cases happens at university and the commercialisation that in many cases happens in the companies,” he explained.

Horizon 2020, the EU programme for research and innovation for the next six years, has a budget of around 80 billion euros.

In the short term, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has stressed his commitment toward innovation at EU level. However, EU member states don’t appear to be ready to put up the funds.

• Author: Ahinara Bascuñana López, Euranet Plus News Agency

Suggested Euranet Plus stories

• EU fund: 2,000 projects off the starting blocks | December 16, 2014 | Euranet Plus News Agency – U Talking to Me? video debate edition | English
  On this week’s edition of “U Talking to Me?” two members of the European Parliament warned that the 315-billion-euro investment plan proposed by the European Commission must be fulfilled with top priority projects, such as the energy union proposed by four Eastern European countries. However, both politicians stressed that the choice of projects should be handled by experts rather than politicians.

• Juncker reveals major investment package | November 25, 2014 | Euranet Plus News Agency | English
  The EU will put forward some 20 billion euros in order to boost investments worth 300 billion in the coming years without any contribution from member states. That’s the master plan that Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, will present to the European Parliament on Wednesday. EU officials say the scheme is realistic, but financial experts have called it too optimistic and warn of disappointment.
• Horizon 2020: European Commission will spend € 70 billion in research | October 16, 2013 | RTBF | French
  The European Commission intends to spend 70 billion euros in research between 2014 and 2021. This plan is known as “Horizon 2020″. In the previous program, 125 small and medium enterprises from Wallonia active in the fields of research benefited from these funds and received more than 200 million euros, with some great industrial success. So the presentation of the new plan stirred the interest of 350 researchers gathered at Namur
• EU Commisioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn launches Horizon 2020 in Romania | October 4, 2013 | Radio România | Romanian
  European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science Máire Geoghegan-Quinn is in Romania for two days. She will attend the presentation of the European Framework Programme for Research, Development and Innovation, Horizon 2020. In Bucharest, the Commissioner will also open an exhibition on research and innovation in Romania. It brings together the most important Romanian research results in three years, embodied in inventions and most representative projects funded by national and European funding through the Ministry of Education.