Slovenia to meet Lisbon Goals with a two-year delay, says Minister
Slovenia is likely to fail to meet in time the research and development (R&D) goals set out in the Lisbon Strategy, said Dusan Lesjak, the Slovenian State Secretary for Higher Education, Science and Technology. Speaking at an informal meeting of the EU's Competitiveness Council in Lisbon, Portugal, Mr Lesjak added that his country would make efforts to reach the R&D goals with a two-year delay at the most. One of the main objectives of the Lisbon Strategy is to transform Europe into most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010. As part of this goal, Member States are making concerted efforts to raise R&D spending to 3% of GDP by 2010. Slovenia spent 1.49% of the GDP on R&D in 2005, according to its National Statistics Office. The average in the EU stands at 1.84% of GDP, according to Eurostat. In terms of investment in R&D, Europe still lags behind the US and Japan, said Mr Lesjak. The EU is also behind its main competitors in terms of human resources in science, with only 5.5 researchers per 1,000 citizens, compared to 9.5 in the US and 10 in Japan. It is estimated that the EU needs an extra 500,000 researchers in order to achieve the objective of raising Europe's investment in research. According to Mr Lesjak, ministers at the informal meeting agreed to continue with their efforts to reach the Lisbon Goals and to focus on increasing the share of private investments in R&D.
Countries
Slovenia