Research and Industry Ministers discuss collaboration with private sector to stimulate R&D investment
At the first ever meeting between Research and Industry Ministers in Girona, Spain on 1 and 2 February, ministers discussed involving the private sector in achieving the target of research expenditure of 3 per cent of GDP by 2010, proposed by EU Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin and recently agreed by the European Commission. The ministers contemplated using public support mechanisms to stimulate private investment, including subsidies, fiscal incentives, guarantee schemes and public-private partnerships. Additional issues discussed included ensuring that new products reach the market place, encouraging researcher mobility, the integration of European financial markets, introducing a more effective Community patent, biotechnology, the importance of sustainable industrial research, bioterrorism and the opening up of national research programmes. The informal seminar highlighted that the encouragement of researcher and technologist mobility both between sectors and Member States will both aid the efficient functioning of the European research and innovation area and make it more attractive for the development of new ideas and help new products to find their way to an integrated European market. The ministers mentioned networking as a vehicle to facilitate interaction between industry and science and to speed up knowledge transfer. Participants highlighted the need for moves towards the integration of European financial markets, making the European risk capital market more attractive for investment and guaranteeing cost-efficiency and the appropriate support for R&D (research and development) and innovation. Ministers also spoke of the need to further mobilise risk capital resources in order to foster entrepreneurship and thus facilitate the full development of a dynamic and competitive European technology market, which will benefit from and stimulate innovation. The meeting saw agreement on the importance of opening up national research programmes for the creation of the European research area (ERA) and on the need to ensure that these activities have a bottom-up approach and are carried out in the spirit of open coordination and with regard to variable geometry. In this context, ministers highlighted the need for information exchanges, and proposed the networking of both national policy makers and R&D programme managers. Ministers stressed that CORDIS can also be used to gather information on national programmes. Participants highlighted the importance of sustainable growth. They attached huge importance to awarding renewed impetus to industrial cooperation initiatives while moving forward in achieving a more simplified regulatory framework. The EU's Industry Ministers agreed unanimously on the need to follow up this issue at future Industry Councils. Documentation presented at the meeting included a report on R&D by the Economic policy committee, the Commission communication on life sciences and biotechnology, the 2001 Innovation scoreboard, a report from the Commission services, reports on the benchmarking of enterprise policy and national research policies as well as various Presidency documents on R&D and innovation matters.
Countries
Spain