Innovation Top Priority
October 20, 2006
Current European Union President Finland has invited European leaders to a one-day retreat to try to step up the political commitment to boosting innovation.
The EU sees innovation as key to its future prosperity, in its companies and universities, but has failed year after year to significantly lift the amount of money plowed into research and development.
Previous effort stalled
A year earlier, Britain hosted a similar informal summit to reiterate the importance of making Europe more innovative, although little has been done at the EU level since then, aside from plans for a European Institute of Technology (EIT).
However, Finland, which regularly tops international rankings for competitiveness, is perhaps better placed at the informal summit in Lahti, north of Helsinki, to lead talks among Europe's leaders about how to be more innovative.
Since EU leaders vowed at a summit in Lisbon in 2000 to become the most competitive technology-driven economy in the world, they have consistently failed to translate their ambitions into actions.
"Nothing is more important for Europe's economic renewal than innovation," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said on Wednesday.
"It is time now to turn talk into action," he added. "Innovation is not some obscure business concept, it is essential to future jobs and growth in Europe."
Barroso is aiming to garner support at the summit for the EIT, which would aim to rival the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States, although it would only be based on networks of academics and business people.
In addition to discussing the EIT, leaders will also focus on reviving long-stalled efforts to set up an EU patent system, which have floundered in the past over disputes about which languages to use.
EU wants to be international elite
Education is seen as key to boosting innovation, especially because the average EU citizen is less educated than adults in other wealthy countries.
In 2005 only 23 percent of the EU working population had tertiary education compared to 39 percent in the United States and 37 percent in Japan, according to the European Commission.
While Europe has traditionally measured its technological abilities against the United States and Japan, it is increasingly looking at developments in China and India.
A report by the German think-tank Deutschland Denken warned in a recent report that Europe was in a "race to the top" with China and India to produce "ever higher value-added goods and services" that would determine future prosperity.
But Europe was ill-prepared because the willingness of policymakers to take up innovation was not matched by the investment in "human capital."