Belgian national service in CORDIS
R&D in Flanders
Since 1995, the Flemish government has an explicit policy stimulating science, technology and innovation. Flanders has endorsed the Barcelona objective of raising R&D investments to 3% by 2010. As a result, Flanders’ expenditures on R&D and innovation activities reached in 2007 2.03% (of which 1.50% private financed, 0.53% public) of its GDP; this is slightly above the EU15 average (1.91%) and EU27 average (1.83%). Recent data on public and private R&D outlays indicate a total of 3.847 million euros in 2007. The Flemish government has done important efforts during the last years to increase the R&D spending for both the public and private sector. The Flemish Government budgeted for science and innovation in 2009 to 1.803,82 million Euros, of which 1.146,97 million Euros is research and development funding. In addition, a number of R&D activities are based on federal public outlays. All together, the R&D budget reaches 0.68% of the Flanders’ GDP.
Looking to the distribution of the private intermural R&D expenditures in 2007, it can be observed that R&D expenses in Flanders are mainly situated in high-tech sectors such as chemistry, pharmaceuticals, ICT, mechatronics, together good for almost 80 % of the total R&D-expenses.
Distribution intramural R&D expenses over sectors in 2007
The share R&D personnel on the entire working population has risen from 1.00% in 1995 to 1.28% in 2007. Total R&D personnel (scientist, technicians and supporting personnel) in Flanders (2007) is about 35.952,64 FTE of which 22.036,6 (61.3%) in companies. The ICT sector represents with 36% of the highest share of the overall company R&D employment.
With regard to patents, Flanders is moderately well performing. Increased patenting is observed the last years. In 1991-2003 Flanders climbed up till 255 patent applications per million inhabitants. The number of EPO patent applications with inventor per million inhabitants in Flanders in 2005 was 214.6; Belgium reached 177.3 and EU-27 105.7. There is a strong concentration of patents in a small number of multinational companies. SMEs are rather absent with regard to patenting. However, the most productive companies with regard to EPO patents have been able to internationally build up technological top positions. The academics are increasingly active in applying for patents as means for protection and valorisation of research results. The main areas for Flemish EPO patent applications are chemical technologies, packaging and printing technology, material processing, textiles, paper, telecommunications and optics. Similar strong positions are observed in USPTO patents granted. Biotechnology (4.1%) and pharmaceutics and cosmetics (4.4%) are also relatively well represented.
Strategic priorities
Strategic priorities for the Flemish R&D policy as adopted for the current governmental period are:
- integration of innovation as a crosscutting dimension
- strengthening of building blocks for science and innovation
- reinforcement of knowledge transfer tools and tools for valorisation of research (strengthening cooperation between research, development and enterprises) and
- internationalisation: a sufficient participation and return in European Framework Programmes as well in different programmes of the federal government
- mobility of researchers: measures have recently been taken in order to attract excellent researchers from abroad to Flanders (Odysseus Programme) and to give them sufficient financing (Methusalem Programme)
- structural stimulation of female researchers
- creation of financial leverages through capital funds
- structural increase of fiscal measures for research and innovation to find an optimal balance with the direct funding in the policy mix
Research and Innovation System
In the Flemish research landscape, major education players are the six universities, taking 88% of the scientific output and 22 higher education institutes (polytechnics). Graduates of higher education in mathematics, science and technology (G-MST) as to the 20-29 aged in Flanders is 11.9 per 1000 in 2007 (compared to EU-27: 13). The percentage of G-MST compared to total higher education degrees reached 19.02% (EU-27 22.4% in 2003). In 2002-2007 the majority of PhDs has been delivered by exact sciences (1.273 PhDs), applied sciences (855), medicine (634) and applied biological sciences (498). These domains represent 65.8% of the total number of PhDs of the last 5 academic years.
The research and innovation infrastructure reflects well the trends in the Flemish science and innovation policy. First of all, Flemish government allocates large budgets to bottom-up project financing: both initiatives from research and private sector get financing through the key funding agencies IWT, FWO and Special Industrial Fund of the universities. A policy topdown approach further streamlines and bundles the bottom up initiatives that have led to successful results. In order to stay ahead of the competition, investing in large research infrastructure has recently been recognised by founding an agency to this end.
Illustrative for this topdown policy are the four strategic research centres, IMEC (nano- and micro-electronics), VITO (materials’ research), VIB (biotech institute) and IBBT ( (broadband technology centre). Two of these centres have evolved into world-renowned research institutes, especially the Interuniversity-Micro Electronics Centre, IMEC (nanotechnology, 1984) in Leuven and the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology, VIB (biotechnology, 1995) in Ghent. The other two are the Flemish Institute for Technological Research, VITO (environment, energy, materials and earth observation, 1992) and the Interdisciplinary institute for Broadband Technology, IBBT (broadband technology, 2006).
In the Flemish Science & Technology landscape, the more demand driven competence poles (also called excellence centres) complement the four strategic research centres. Excellence centres gear the knowledge towards specific industry needs and applications. They maximally support companies in particular sectors by providing synergy platforms in innovation and R&D between knowledge centres and clusters of companies. Excellence centres include Flanders’ DRIVE (automotives industry), VIL (Flanders Institute for Logistics), FMTC (Flanders' Mechatronics Technology Centre), Flanders’ Food (innovative foods), FLAMAC (Flanders Materials Centre), etc.
Bottom-up financing goes to a large number of smaller innovation stimulating networks and co-operation in innovation. These networks are managed in their trajectory by the innovation funding agency IWT and are supported by the Flemish government.
Flanders also counts scientific institutes of the Flemish Community, Collective Research Centres (federal competence) and a few various institutes. Flanders has seven scientific institutes, among which the Prince Leopold Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp, the Flemish Marine institute, Institute for Agricultural and Fisheries Research, etc.
Flanders foresees to play an international pioneers’ role in a number of high tech knowledge domains where radical innovations (this means with a time span of 10 years and more) can take place: the tertiary sector (transport-logistics-services), e-health services, biotech, healthcare, food prevention and treatment, new materials, nanotech and converting industry, ICT for socio-economic innovations and energy and environment for services and converting industry.
Participation in the EU Programmes
In order to contribute to the ambitious goals of European Research Area towards more integration and structuring of the various regional research and innovation systems, Flanders actively participated to the European Sixth Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration Activities and is in the top10 of participation related to GDP. 422 Flemish institutes participated in 1051 Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) projects with a total budget of 352.29 million euros, 2.12 % of the total allocated EU 6FP funding. Universities and research centres take with respectively 41% and 34% the bulk of the Flanders’ participation FP6 funding. Companies represent 21%. With regard to the Flemish part in the FP6 allocated funding, Flanders has relatively the strongest position in EURATOM (6.11%) with the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre (federal competency) as major player. Flanders is a frequent participant in Information Society Technologies (22% of the Flemish participations). This thematic priority (IST) takes more than 30% of the total Flanders’ FP6 funding. Life Sciences and Health take 15% of the total Flanders’ funding in FP6. Mobility, sustainable development and NMP (Nanotechnologies, sciences, knowledge-based multifunctional materials and new production processes and devices) represented about 10% of the total Flanders' funding in FP6. With regard to the overall FP6 budget, the K.U.Leuven receiving a total funding of 74 million euros (21% of total Flemish participation funding) ranked at the 6th place of European universities and maintains its leading position in the FP6, followed by IMEC (17%), UGent (9%) and VIB (6%). Company participation is clearly concentrated in IST with nearly half of Flemish company funding obtained from IST projects.
Flanders participates in more than one-fourth of the ERA-NET projects: 24 projects have been started up by Flemish actors, mainly EWI, IWT and FWO.
Flanders is involved in 2 art. 169 initiatives, EUROSTARS and AAL (Ambient Assisted Living) and in 5 art 171 initiatives (Joint Technology Initiatives): ARTEMIS (Embedded Intelligence and Systems), ENIAC (Nanotechnology), IMI (Innovative Medicines Initiative), “Fuel Cells and Hydrogen” and CLEAN SKY.
Flanders remains prominently present in the international EUREKA network: Flemish partners have been supported by the agency IWT in 143 EUREKA-projects over the period 2000-2007. Flanders is well represented in the ICT-clusters MEDEA+/CATRENE, ITEA2, CELTIC and EURIPIDES.