Commission puts forward lead markets initiative
The European Commission has called for concerted action to quickly foster the emergence of six lead markets where Europe has the potential to become a world leader. The 'Lead Markets Initiative for Europe' (LMI) focuses on areas where Europe's public authorities can facilitate industry-led innovation by creating favourable legal and regulatory frameworks, setting standards, improving access to risk capital, providing support for research and encouraging public procurement for innovative goods and services. The first high-growth lead markets identified for research and innovation-rich goods and services are bio-based products, e-health, protective textiles, sustainable construction, recycling and renewable energies. The Commission hopes its initiative will increase the combined annual turnover of these markets from €120 billion to over €300 billion and result in more than 3 million jobs in the EU in 2020. 'Europe must develop innovation friendly markets in a more targeted way, creating conditions to facilitate the marketing of innovative products and services,' said Commission Vice President Günter Verheugen, responsible for enterprise and industry policy. 'The Lead Market Initiative has identified promising emerging markets in which the European Union has the potential to become world leader and where coordinated action is urgently needed,' he added. Bio-based products has been identified as one of the areas in which an innovation-friendly market can be created for businesses to launch new products made from renewable raw materials. 'Europe is well placed in the markets for innovative bio-based products, building on a leading technological and industrial position. Perceived uncertainty about product properties and weak market transparency however hinder the fast take-up of products,' reads a statement from the Commission. Its action plan in this lead market is to integrate a range of actions, improving the present situation for bio-based products by addressing a number of different aspects. These will include standardisation, labelling and certification to ensure quality and consumer information on the new products. The plan also foresees harnessing the purchases of public authorities. The European biotech industry welcomed the Commission's communication saying that encouraging public procurement for bio-based products, stimulating demand via standards, developing an information and communication campaign explaining the benefits of these products, and looking for specific financial support for the establishment of biorefinery pilot and demonstration plants would stimulate the development, production and uptake of bio-based products in Europe. 'This Lead Market Initiative is the first step in the process of active political support and incentives that will help Europe reap the full benefits of the knowledge based bio-economy. We are pleased that the Commission has adopted an integrated approach bringing together all the major policy areas - such as research and innovation, environment, agriculture, industry, transport and energy - to develop a common action plan in this area. We encourage the Commission and the Member States to follow up this Communication with concrete actions to provide full benefits and increased competitiveness for the European market,' said Ian Hudson, the Chair of EuropaBio's Industrial Biotech Council.