The EU’s research and innovation policy has to be overhauled to end in-fighting between member states and create an ‘innovation union’, according to the European Commission.

The Commission will urge the European Council – the national government leaders – to take “collective responsibility” for a “business-oriented” research and innovation policy that tackles big questions, such as the ageing population and the green economy,

Innovation policy should kick Europe out of its “business-as-usual comfort zone”, the Commission will argue.

The research and innovation strategy is the latest in a series of policy papers on the Europe 2020 strategy. It will be published on 7 October in the name of Máire Geoghegan-Quinn and Antonio Tajani, the European commissioners for research and industry respectively.

They will argue that a “sea-change” in innovation policy is required. The commissioners call on leaders to pool money and expertise into (as yet unspecified) shared European research projects. They propose that, starting from December this year, progress towards an “innovation union” should be assessed by the European Council every other year.

The Commission is concerned that member states’ first instinct is to compete rather than collaborate on research, notwithstanding more joint work in recent years. “Despite some important progress…the overall policy response has been too timid and fragmented to overcome vested interests and make the major impacts,” states an early draft of the Commission paper.

Funding targets

A headline target of Europe 2020 is to increase Europe’s spending on research and innovation to 3% of gross domestic product by 2020. The same target agreed in 2000 was missed because of a shortfall in private spending.

Despite calls for change, many policy ideas in the “innovation union” strategy are familiar: a ‘European Research Area’ to make it easier for researchers to move across borders; a renewed push to slash red tape for researchers applying for grants; greater use of EU structural funds for innovation; more joint research projects between the Commission and EU member states.

The Commission is also talking tough on an EU-wide patent, a goal that has eluded the Union for half a century. Now the Commission is insisting that the first EU patent will be granted “no later than 2014” (see Page 22).

The bid to get government leaders to take more ownership of innovation mirrors European Council President Herman Van Rompuy’s efforts to get national leaders to stop shirking responsibility for economic governance.

Hans Martens, chief executive of the European Policy Centre think-tank, cautioned that giving too much weight to the European Council could reduce democratic oversight. “There could be a risk, if the heads of state and government take over on an intergovernmental basis, that we can’t hold them accountable.”

Imrich Chlamtac, the professor-president of the European Alliance for Innovation, a network of business and publicly-funded researchers, urged the Commission not to lose sight of the grassroots. “Innovation is not happening in the prime minister’s office; innovation is happening in the researchers’ labs at all levels,” he said. The Commission and national governments need to create “an innovation infrastructure” to help small and medium-sized enterprises turn good ideas into products, he said.

Noting that “not many of the arguments in innovation policy are new”, Martens said public policy needed to focus on creating markets – through subsidies and regulations – rather than backing specific companies.

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He added that it was vital to build on the achievements of the single market launched by former Commission president Jacques Delors.

“The internal market plays a really big role here. We have to build on the four freedoms and add a fifth one – freedom of movement of knowledge. It is very important that we move the old Delors single market into cyber space,” Martens said.