"The race to productivity and knowledge: Where does Europe stand?"

Title: "The race to productivity and knowledge: Where does Europe stand?"

Mr Erkki Liikanen Member of the European Commission, responsible for Enterprise and the Information Society "The race to productivity and knowledge: Where does Europe stand?" IST 2002 Conference Copenhagen, 4 November 2002

Europe's investments into R&D is in general lower compared to US and Japan. It confirms how importants the Barcelona target of 3% of GDP in R&D is.

This applies particularly to research in the ICT sector. US invests three times more in research in this sector. There is a major difference in private sector spending.

So how can we catch up?

First, we need to increase the level of support to Research and development, also in the private sector. This is true for all research fields and in particular in ICT. Investments need to be made now to master the next generation of technologies and applications.

Second, a sustained effort is needed in the public and private sector to make the best use of ICT:
*    you need more investment in ICT but, at the same time, as said before, you need to reorganise the back office and business processes.
*    ICT can be used as tool to modernise governments and public sectors.
*    to get, and keep, everyone on-line we need to develop high value-added products and services.

eEurope 2005 is one reply to these challenges. I come back to it later.

Finally, we need to support innovation and entrepreneurship and improve our schemes for education and learning.

More info:
http://europa.eu.int/rapid/start/cgi/guesten.ksh?p_action.gettxt=gt&doc=SPEECH/02/536|0|RAPID&lg=EN&display=