Toespraak EU-voorzitter Van Rompuy op conferentie 'Regio's als motoren van nieuwe groei via slimme specialisatie' (en)

EUROPEAN COUNCIL THE PRESIDT

Brussels, 8 November 2013 EUCO

PRESSE 459 PR PCE 200

Keynote speech by President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy i at the conference "Regions as motors of new growth through smart specialisation"

What we need, what Europe needs is leadership, commitment, collaboration, investment and faith in our future. Of course, as also stated in this interesting and funny video, there is no magic solution and, unfortunately, we or I cannot decree innovation. But the European Council can foster it, providing guidance and delivering impulsion and orientation

That is exactly what we did, all together, the Heads of State or Government, the President of the Commission and myself, a fortnight ago. The political message we delivered, the Conclusions we adopted and the concrete measures we recommended the Commission and the Member States to take, are necessary if we want Europe to be in a leader's position. Not in ten years time. But in three years time

And to be in a leader's position means to recover competitiveness. And, the only way to recover it, is to use, wherever and whenever we can, the "innovation tool". Because, as the Nobel Prize for economy Edmund Phelps rightly stated recently, "it is an 'innovation crisis' that is at the origin of our economic decline"

Innovation is more than just a "research and development" policy. Innovation is the ability of a system not only to produce new ideas but also to bring them to the markets, and translate them into economic growth and prosperity. In short, innovation stands for turning new ideas into growth and jobs. That is why innovation, which we could also call "applied creation", is for the years to come "the" overarching priority for the European Union, a benchmark for its actions. It will be embedded in all European Union and Member States policies

Only with a quantum leap on innovation will we, Europeans, be able to overcome economic and budgetary obstacles in a lasting way. Will we be able to help our industries to compete successfully and to modernize our welfare societies

An integrated approach on innovation is what would make the difference, in the same way as what took place during the early phases of the Single Market. Namely an explicit agreement between all relevant actors, public and private, to make "fostering innovation and its effects on competitiveness and employment" an overarching and imperative goal for European policies. This was and is the soul of the Conclusions adopted fourteen days ago. Soul that we translated into concrete recommendations to keep the soul both alive and vivid

Today, the Union's intellectual and scientific potential does not always translate into new products and services that can be sold on the markets. The reasons for this "commercialisation gap" range from difficulties in accessing finance, through market barriers and excessive red tape, to complex intellectual property rights regimes

We too often address the commercialisation gap by using one instrument at the time: or we use grants; or pre-commercial public procurement; or venture capital. To bridge the commercialisation gap we should combine and interconnect all these instruments and, as in the United States, develop an integrated model in order to bridge the gap between scientific leadership and market leadership

The 2010 Innovation Union flagship initiative provides a number of valuable instruments which, combined with financing programmes, such as COSME and HORIZON 2020, and including the Risk-Sharing Finance Facility, can support innovation and its impact on the market

As a young and successful entrepreneur, member of the "Manifesto" Group of Commissioner Kroes, recently told me: "In Europe, we have all the pieces. We just have to put them together, to package them. And we have the potential to do so".

Success will be measured by transformation of research in markets, and by Gross Domestic Product growth. The innovation indicator recently developed by the DG Research will help to follow the progress made

With this objective of growth in mind, the European Council has also put the emphasis on the unique role of the public sector to create growth in Europe. People are not sufficiently aware that total government expenditure represents about 50% of the Union's Gross Domestic Product and about 15% of the total employment of the Union. Public procurement amounts today in the Union for 17% of our Gross Domestic Product

So, innovation by the public sector - the public sector giving the impulse, is of course very important, but it is obvious that innovation of the public sector is even more crucial. Public administration can achieve 20% cost reduction just by moving to e-Government, e-Health and e-Procurement. Not to speak about increasing the skills potential of the citizens by using more intensively e-Education tools. Because it is fine to deal with digital economy and innovation... But we are standing nowhere if we don't involve people, if they have not the skills allowing them to take part, to be part, of this digital economy. In order to develop the economy by developing themselves

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In other words: we won't be able to bridge the commercialisation gap if we don't bridge, properly, the education gap. If, as another young entrepreneur told me, "our society doesn't invest in Massive Open Online Courses". Education and long-life learning will bring us to better develop a digital economy model in Europe and, by doing so, to guarantee Europe's socio-economic model and Europe's role in the world

And if I mention here e-economy, it is because digital economy is part of innovation. As smart specialisation is: supporting strategic growth agendas; focusing on the microeconomics of competitiveness; and mobilising the innovation and entrepreneurial opportunities in each region

The European Council hinted at it during its latest meeting but we will devote a large part to it during the Council of February next year, Council more particularly dedicated to industrial competitiveness. In fact, we did more than just "hinting at it", even if the terminology "smart specialisation" was never used. Indeed, we decided :

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  to better focus EU funds on common societal challenges. Be it ageing, energy and food security or clean transport;
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  to better align public - meaning also regional - and private investment decisions to leverage growth;
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  and to help in the setting up of cross-border and European-wide clusters and networks

All these measures are linked with smart specialisation. As "knowledge needs" and "skills" also are. And this whichever industrial sector we are looking at

The loss of jobs is concentrated in the low-skill segment of the economy. Not necessary in the low-tech sectors. The decline in the manufacturing of electronics in Europe is a reminder that high-tech is not in itself a shield against the loss of jobs. And even low-tech sectors as textiles and food are more and more skill intensive

Innovative capacity is important for all manufacturing sectors, not only for the high-tech sectors. And it requires a high-quality human capital base with a well-educated and trained workforce. But this is not enough

To pursue an active smart specialisation policy, to enable firms, regions and countries to build sustainable competitive positions in world markets and to participate in the global value chains, we need to set up what I could call a "collaborative model". A model bringing all stakeholders together. Stakeholders of several disciplines as witness the video "Smart specialisation in practice". And stakeholders of both the private and the public sectors

Because smart specialisation deals with a more vertical and non neutral logic of intervention. The process of identification and selection of desirable areas for intervention is about some technologies, fields, sub-systems that could be favoured

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The difficult policy challenge is to emphasize a vertical logic of prioritization while avoiding the government failures usually associated with top-down and centralized bureaucratic process of technology choices and selection. The examples of Flanders deciding to bet in the seventies on ICT with EVIEC and on bio with VIB, and the example of Belgium deciding, also in the seventies, to engage in space technologies, show that it works. That giving priority to investments that play to the regions existing or potential strengths works. That intelligently designed policy work. But it works thanks to the setting up of a collaborative model, meaning an interactive process of dialogue between the private and the public sector

An interactive process in which the private sector is discovering and producing information about new or renewed activities. And in which the public authorities not only assess the potential but, afterwards, also empower the actors more capable of realizing the potential

This dialogue, this collaboration should not happen only once. It should be a constant and constructive dialogue, taking place practically every day. Of course, establishing a dialogue, knowing better each other and the expectations of each other, doesn't mean falling into dishonest compromise. The responsibilities shouldn't be mixed up

But, clearly, the society is better off and the economy grows in a more sustainable way where universities, public institutions and industry work permanently together and not against each other. When they listen to each other in order to reach a common understanding and to share a common vision of the sector they are dealing with. When stakeholders agree on a common objective and put all efforts together to reach that objective

This is the political model the Nordic countries are applying; and it is not by chance that innovation and growth are more a success in these countries than in other European countries. That is why I cannot but applaud the Commission and in particular DG Regio's initiative to build a platform of services to support regions in their efforts to devise and implement a smart specialisation strategy

Let's go on, without delay, with the implementation of smart specialisation policies in Europe. The French author Jean Racine wrote: "The play is made; it remains for me to write it"; to paraphrase him and reverse the sense of the sentence, I will conclude by saying: "The Conclusions are written; it remains for the stakeholders to make them, all over Europe, a reality". I thank you

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