Swedish representatives set out priorities to Commission and Presidency
More investment is needed in research and a greater ability to bring its results to market was the message from Swedish business at an event on 10 January hosted by the Swedish employers' confederation and attended by two European Commissioners. 'We have a high proportion of our GNP (gross national product) dedicated to research and development,' said Soren Gyll, chairman of the federation of Swedish industries, 'and we have a good dialogue with the government in this area.' But the problem is that the research, both private and publicly funded is not reaching the market, according to Leif Johansson, President and CEO of Volvo. 'If we [Europe] are compared to Japan and the USA on whether we can translate that R&D to marketable products, we can see that we are at a disadvantage,' he said. Anders Scharp, Chairman of the Swedish employers' confederation, added that R&D should be one of the first factors when considering projects and products. 'In the future, there will be scaling in R&D. To be able to support projects, it will be much more important to look at scaling of R&D than look at scaling of production.' The private sector representatives, along with Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom, focused on one of the three central priorities for the Swedish Presidency - environment. Both Mr Johansson and Ms Wallström emphasised that free trade and environmental standards are not incompatible and should indeed enhance competitiveness. Ms Wallström claimed that environmentally friendly firms had recorded higher than average growth and said that they represented a 'win-win-win' scenario - good for the environment, good for the economy and good for society. Speaking to CORDIS News, she said there should also be progress on concrete issues such as state aid to renewable energies-projects and firms. 'I hope that we will have a good proposal from the Commission and I think that Sweden will be supportive,' she said. 'I think that we have reached a good position and this should be finished during the period of the Swedish Presidency.' Enterprise and Information society Commissioner added that he was 'very happy to see the commitment of the Swedish Presidency in Stockholm' to the challenge of following up the agenda set out at Lisbon of making Europe a successful and competitive knowledge-based society. He also added that progress has already been made, through the commitment made to hold an informal meeting of Employment and Telecommunications ministers to look at the skills gap in IT in Europe.
Kraje
Sweden