Press Release: Commission presents roadmap to increase investment in research

The Commission yesterday presented its strategy to respond to the March 2002 Barcelona European Council's call to raise research spending to 3% of EU average Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Today Europe lags at 1.9 % The Communication 'More research for Europe' looks into Europe's under-investment in science and technology and its harmful consequences for EU competitiveness, growth and employment. Research and development (R&D) investment (private and public) in the US now exceeds EU expenditure by more than €120 billion every year. Without prompt action, this knowledge gap will hamper Europe's innovative potential and its capacity to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010, a goal set by the Lisbon European Council in March 2000. The main challenge is to increase R&D business funding in Europe, which should be raised to two-thirds of R&D expenditure, a level already attained or exceeded in the USA, Japan and several Member States, instead of 55% on average today. Co-ordinated action at European, national and regional levels is therefore necessary to make Europe more attractive to business investment in R&D. Access to finance, better regulation, human resources, intellectual property rights, fiscal policies and other incentives have to be fine-tuned to R&D needs. The Commission will now launch a broad stakeholder consultation to identify a focused set of actions by early 2003.