National practices compared in competitiveness benchmarking exercise
The European Commission has released the first findings from a set of competitiveness benchmarking exercises across Europe, entitled 'Better, but not yet the best'. The findings, the first of their kind, give European Union Member States the opportunity to learn from one another, develop a policy mix that is right for them and improve their competitive performance across the board, thus bettering the framework conditions for entrepreneurs to succeed. This in turn will facilitate the realisation of the Enterprise Europe ambition, to create the world's most competitive and dynamic knowledge-driven economy by 2005, adopted by Member States at the Lisbon European Council in March 2000. 'Europe's competitiveness is improving, but still not fast enough to close the gap with our competitors, said Enterprise and Information Society Commissioner Erkki Liikanen. 'We need to have a better idea of where we should improve to meet this challenge. Today's initiative will sharpen our policy instruments and allow Member States to identify and apply best practices in key enterprise policy areas to improve EU's overall performance.' Results are based on 20 indicators, which are divided into four themes: human resources, public and private investments, scientific and technological productivity and the impact of research and technological development in competitiveness and employment. The Commission has issued four documents: - The enterprise policy scoreboard presents the most comprehensive picture yet of the EU's competitive performance in the key enterprise fields of entrepreneurship, innovation and access to markets, whilst identifying problem areas, best practices and targets. - The competitiveness report presents structural indicators, structural analysis and comparative analysis. It outlines Europe's ambitions in terms of the knowledge-based economy, and slow progress in that direction. - The entrepreneurship and competitiveness action plan report is a presentation of best practice models that must be aired and taken up more widely. - The summary of results of best practice related activities brings together reports from selected benchmarking projects. Taken together, this package provides the broadest and sharpest picture yet of the EU's competitive strengths and weaknesses, and will allow Member States and enterprise policy practitioners to learn from each other how best to combine and exploit their competitive strengths. Work on implementing the competitiveness recommendations should intensify in 2001. Although driven by Member States, it will be closely monitored by the European Commission in order to identify successes and identify potential for further improvement. The results of this benchmarking operation will be presented annually to the Council and the European Parliament.