Europe

On 26 March 2010, the European Council agreed to the European Commission's proposal to launch a new strategy for jobs and growth, Europe 2020, based on enhanced coordination of economic policies, which will focus on the key areas where action is needed to boost Europe's potential for sustainable growth and competitiveness. The "Europe 2020 Integrated Guidelines" set out the framework for the Europe 2020 strategy and reforms at Member State level. To ensure coherence and clarity, the guidelines are limited in number and reflect the European Council conclusions. The guidelines are integrated to ensure that national and EU-level policies contribute fully to achieving the objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy. Following them in a synchronised manner will help Member States reap the positive spill-over effects of coordinated structural reforms, particularly within the euro area

In the Spring Council in 2005, Heads of State and Government renewed the Lisbon Strategy and placed its focus on growth and jobs. They organised the Lisbon Strategy around three- year cycles, whilst strengthening ownership and accountability by clearly distinguishing between reforms which should be undertaken by Member States and those for which the Community should take the lead. As one of the instruments to implement the Strategy, the Council approved a set of integrated guidelines and adopted the necessary legal instruments based on Articles 99 and 128 of the Treaty. These guidelines are meant to guide Member States, as they implement national reforms, through their National Reform Programmes (NRP).

The Community Strategic Guidelines contain the principles and priorities of cohesion policy and suggest ways the European regions can take full advantage of the € 308 billion that has been made available for national and regional aid programmes over the period 2007-2013. According to the guidelines and in line with the renewed Lisbon Strategy, programmes co-financed through the cohesion policy should seek to target resources on the following three priorities: improving the attractiveness of Member States, regions and cities by improving accessibility, ensuring adequate quality and level of services, and preserving their environmental potential; encouraging innovation, entrepreneurship and the growth of the knowledge economy by research and innovation capacities, including new information and communication technologies; and creating more and better jobs by attracting more people into employment entrepreneurial activity, improving adaptability of workers and enterprises and increasing investment in human capital.

The Council Conclusions of the 2 December 2008 defined a "2020 Vision for the European Research Area". By 2020, all actors fully benefit from the "Fifth Freedom" across the ERA: free circulation of researchers, knowledge and technology. The ERA provides attractive conditions and effective and efficient governance for doing research and investing in R&D intensive sectors in Europe. It creates strong added value by fostering a healthy Europe-wide scientific competition whilst ensuring the appropriate level of cooperation and coordination. It is responsive to the needs and ambitions of citizens and effectively contributes to the sustainable development and competitiveness of Europe.

The creation of a European Research Area (ERA) was proposed by the European Commission in its communication 'Towards a European Research Area' of January 2000, which remains a main reference on the subject. The objective of creating ERA was endorsed by the EU shortly afterwards at the March 2000 Lisbon European Council.

Innovation cannot be organised by decree. It comes from people, and only people - scientists, researchers, entrepreneurs and their employees, investors, consumers and public authorities - will make Europe more innovative. But they do not act in a vacuum. They act with a mindset and in a framework which either discourages or incites them to enter unknown territories. Innovation enables European industries to position themselves at the upper end of the global value chain, making Europe the world market leader in energy and resource efficient products and technologies and equipping us with the means needed for global action. Moreover, only in an environment that supports innovation can R&D efforts result in real gains.

Europe has to become a truly knowledge-based and innovation-friendly society where innovation is not feared by the public but welcomed, is not hindered but encouraged, and where it is part of the core societal values and understood to work for the benefit of all its citizens. That is why the 2006 Spring European Council called on the European Commission to present "a broad based innovation strategy for Europe that translates investments in knowledge into products and services".

The European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) provides a comparative assessment of the innovation performance of EU27 Member States, under the EU Lisbon Strategy. The EIS includes innovation indicators and trend analyses for the EU27 Member States as well as for Croatia, Turkey, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland. Based on their innovation performance across 29 indicators, EU Member States fall into the following four country groups: "innovation leaders", "innovation followers", "moderate innovators" and "catching-up countries". The methodology for the 2009 and 2008 EIS is revised compared to that of 2007 with a stronger focus on services, non-technological aspects, and outputs of innovation.

Since the launch of the Lisbon agenda in 2000, the importance of innovation in improving the performance of the European economy has been recognised. The aim in a global and more competitive economy was to help Europe to move up the value chain and, in particular, to exploit the opportunities offered by the growing knowledge economy. In 2005, the Commission proposed a renewed Lisbon agenda: the partnership for growth & jobs, where once again innovation was seen as a key driver. In pursuit of this new plan, the Council said that "the Union must mobilise all appropriate national and Community resources including Cohesion policy", meaning that promoting innovation is a key feature in the National Reform Programmes and a main priority for the new Cohesion policy programmes for 2007-2013.

It is now commonly accepted that a science-based, regional development strategy is an important precondition for European growth. In many countries of the EU, the regional level has become the starting point for policy measures to better exploit research and technology potentials. According to Koschatzky (2005), regions have become the object of multi-actor and multi-level governance structures and hierarchies. Their policy arena is populated by a variety of political, corporate, social and scientific actors.

The interface of regional systems with national and pan-European R&D systems, particularly in the context of the Lisbon objectives, and the subsequent assessment of progress towards a more competitive knowledge economy calls for a more in-depth understanding of regional level trends and structures. The focus of this study is on regional scientific and technological relative specialisation patterns within the ERA, taking into account R&D investment patterns.world, notably through researcher mobility, knowledge sharing and the development of virtual networks and 'communities'.

Despite visible catching-up tendencies, the European Research System remains driven by a limited number of leading regions which account for a dominant share of investment (the top 25 regions account for about 50 % of expenditure). Consequently, there is a structural need to support the participation of "middle range" regions in European research efforts and to enhance their capacity for adopting research findings generated elsewhere (absorptive capacity). Evidence suggests, however, that such a process will need time as the spatial distribution of R&D spending in Europe has proven to be quite persistent in the past.