Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions – Partnering in research and innovation

Europe is gradually recovering from the deepest economic and financial crisis since the 1930s. At the same time, as the Spring 2011 European Council emphasised, "risks remain and we must continue our determined action".

For the recovery to be maintained, we must use existing public and private resources for research and innovation (R&I) in a smart way to optimise the contribution of public and private players in achieving sustainable growth. This is essential to achieving the European Research Area (ERA) by 2014 and for delivering on the Innovation Union, the Digital Agenda and other EU 2020 Flagships.

The Commission's Innovation Union Communication highlights the importance of partnering in European R&I as a means of "pooling forces to achieve breakthroughs". Partnering brings together European and national level public players in Public-Public Partnerships (P2Ps) and public and private players in Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs), with a number of aims:
- build critical mass to ensure the scale and scope required;
- facilitate joint vision development and strategic agenda setting, including at international level;
- contribute to the evolution to a programming approach in European R&I so as to realise a broad-based focus embracing all potential partners;
- provide for flexible structures that facilitate the size and scope of a partnership, depending on its nature and goals.

In these ways, the partnering approach can help to address major societal challenges and strengthen Europe's competitive position by making the R&I cycle more efficient and shortening the time from research to market. It can also contribute to environmental and resource efficiency objectives. When the necessary commitment to partnering exists, Europe can excel in science and technology and achieve critical mass.

For this reason, under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research (FP7), the Competitiveness and Innovation Programme (CIP), the ERA and the Innovation Union policy framework, different forms of partnering have been developed and piloted. This has been an important step towards establishing a common vision of how partnering can maximise the contribution of R&I to achieving smart, sustainable growth in Europe.

There is now a need to go further to overcome unnecessary duplication and to provide clarity on how partnering can best be implemented. In this context, the aim of this Communication is to learn from and build on experience to date and to take forward the partnering concept.

EUR-Lex: COM(2011)572: Follow the progress of this document through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2011:572:FIN

European Commission: SEC(2011)1072: Report on the first interim evaluation of the Innovative Medicine Initiative Joint Undertaking / Clean Sky Joint Technology Initiative Joint Undertaking / Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=SEC:2011:1072:FIN:EN:PDF

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