EUs innovasjonspolitikk 2005-2009

EUs innovasjonspolitikk 2005-2009

Kommisjonens arbeidsdokument: En vurdering av Felleskapets innovasjonspolitikk Assessing i perioden 2005-2009

Arbeidsdokument lagt fram av Kommisjonen 9.9.2009

Nærmere omtale

BAKGRUNN (fra kommisjonsdokumentet, engelsk utgave)

This Staff Working Document presents a review of the progress made since 2005 in delivering Community policies in support of innovation. It gives an overview of the work done to fulfil the objectives set in the 2005 Communication “More Research and Innovation – Investing for Growth and Employment: A Common Approach” 81] and the 2006 Communication “Putting knowledge into practice: A broad-based innovation strategy for Europe” [2].

A recent ex post evaluation of DG Enterprise and Industry’s innovation activities that were funded through FP6 [3] highlighted the need for better assessing the impact of the actions rather than mainly describing their output. Accordingly, this staff working document also takes a critical look, and besides describing the accomplishments, it also gives an account of the results of the actions and possible lessons to be learnt.

The 2005 Communication was adopted at a time when the Lisbon Strategy had just been re-launched, including research and innovation policies as instruments to enhance the competitiveness of the European economy. Accordingly, the Communication presented 19 points for action around these two policy areas.

The Aho Report [4] published in February 2006 at the request of the European Council, put innovation at the top of the political agenda. It formulated the need to complement supply side instruments with demand side innovation measures and underlined the urgency of making Europe more innovation friendly (“innovate before it is too late”). The Commission’s response to the Aho Report was the Communication on the broad-based innovation strategy adopted in September 2006. It was conceived as a combination of new and up-dated policy instruments.

The different instruments of the broad based innovation strategy vary considerably in their scope and depth, as well as in the time needed for their implementation and until first impacts should be felt. They also presented a mix of actions under Community competence and of actions under Member States’ competence. Therefore, the expectations in terms of implementation and impact should be commensurate with these considerations.

To facilitate the reading of this paper, policies have been categorised in three groups according to whether they pursued mainly improving framework conditions for innovation, supply-side measures, or the combination of supply with demand-side measures.

1 COM(2005) 488 final available at:http://ec.europa.eu/invest-in-research/action/2005_communication_en.htm
2 COM(2006) 502 final available at:http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2006:0502:FIN:en:PDF
3 "Ex post evaluation of the activities carried out by DG Enterprise and Industry under FP6", GHK, Technopolis, September 2008
4 See:http://ec.europa.eu/invest-in-research/pdf/download_en/aho_report.pdf