On the highway to Lissabon
The Austrian federal ministry for Education, Science and Culture organised an event on the theme of “The Lissabon objective” and how well we are doing on the way towards that.
Xabier GOENAGA from the Commission presented the international perspective; Hans SÄNKEL, Gerhard RIEMER and Ludovit GARZIK presented more national views; Ingolf SCHÃDLER, Michael LOSCH and Peter KOWALSKI provided insights from the perspectives of the three ministeries (BMVIT, BMWA and BMBWK).
Some conclusions:
- Europe is falling behind (the US and Japan; also China and India)
- Research and innovation go together; the 3% target can only be a symbol
- Austria is doing well (and gaining momentum)
- We (Austria) need to change from a “catching up” to a “front runner” strategy. For instance in the European Innovation Scoreboard 2005 Austria was No. 8 worldwide (2004: 15) and No. 5 in Europe (2004: we were on 8th position).
- To keep improving we need a yearly increase in resarch funding (both from government as well as industry) of about 7-9% until 2010. This will be hard to achieve!
- Mr. LOSCH presented an interesting argument in that he mentioned that the structural funds should be targeted towards innovation (and research). He sees a tremendous potential in these funds.
All in all a very interesting meeting, inspiring, lot’s of good presentations.
Add comment October 13th, 2006
