EUROPA - Gateway to the European Union
Research and innovation help deliver jobs, prosperity and quality of life. Although the EU is the global leader in many technologies, it faces increasing challenges from traditional competitors and emerging economies alike. Joint programming pools research efforts and can thus deliver results that the EU countries cannot achieve in isolation.
Research and development (R&D) contributes to economic growth and job creation. New technology also helps address social challenges, such as poverty, health problems and environmental degradation.
Research and development intensity (GERD as % of GDP) in the EU, Japan and the United States 1995-2005
To remain competitive the EU needs to spend more on research and development, matching investment R&D by major competitors. In particular, EU industry needs to close the spending gap between itself and counterparts in the US and Japan to remain competitive at the cutting edge of technology and innovation. The EU is likely to fall short of its goal to close this gap by investing 3% of GDP in research by 2010.
The EU must also improve its record of translating scientific knowledge into patented processes and products for use in high-tech industries. The new European Institute for Innovation and Technology will support this process by promoting partnerships which link the three sides of the ‘knowledge triangle’: education, innovation and research.
The EU is striving to create a single European Research Area that encourages knowledge transfer through networks of world-class European researchers. Cooperation between European countries is further encouraged through cutting-edge infrastructure and joint policy-making for research. Such a research area will allow EU countries to address major challenges such as the A (H1N1) influenza outbreak together.
The most concrete manifestation of EU research and innovation policy is the Seventh Framework Programme 2007-2013 (FP7), which has a budget of €50.5 billion.
EU funds are helping GPS systems to make search-and-rescue easier.
There are four strands to FP7:
The EU's Joint Research Centre (JRC) is a network of seven research institutes across the EU. In addition to nuclear energy and nuclear safety research, the JRC has developed such technologies as a remote sensing technology to detect emerging food crises in developing countries where EU food aid will be needed.
The ITER reactor under construction in Cadarache, France, is seen as a major step towards the creation of prototype reactors for power stations based on nuclear fusion, a form of nuclear power regarded as safe, sustainable and environmentally responsible. The EU, Canada, China, India, Japan, South Korea, the United States and Russia are cooperating on the project.
Space has its own research budget for the first time in FP7, marking the increasing importance the EU attaches to playing an independent role in space. The Global Monitoring for Environment and Security project will make it easier to use observations from space to anticipate or deal with environmental and security crises.
The EU is also leading the Galileo project for the next generation of satellite global positioning systems (GPS), another area where the EU wants to develop its own technology rather than rely on other countries. The systems of the future will have a much broader range of applications than the common GPS used to reach a destination on car journeys, such as more efficient traffic management and a feature to support search-and-rescue operations.
