Cost of research to upset EU budget talks

The EU's research budget should not go up with the present thinking and staid non-creative mindsets. All that we are doing with our huge research budget presently is getting us nowhere for increased jobs and future prospects. The current economic climate concerning jobs can clearly testify to that. Indeed if the EU has its economic thinking head on it should start thinking differently as if it does not, we shall simply be pouring more millions of Euros down the drain with no positive outcome or benefit for the EU’s 500 million citizens. Indeed until the EU provides the right innovative infrastructure so that Europe’s innovative thought can flourish and thereby we get the Innovation strategy right, we are literally going nowhere fast and unfortunately in the opposite direction to more innovative thinking nations of the world (predominantly based in the East). Our biggest problem in many ways is that our politicians have backgrounds and experience in the legal professions and do not really understand the power of innovation and how it can transform economic fortunes. In contrast the Chinese know this very well and where the majority of their main leaders are either engineers or scientists of note. In this respect even when the young Turks take control next month seven out of the top ten Chinese leaders will either have a scientific discipline, a technological discipline or engineering discipline background. For all new wealth is basically science, engineering and technological based and you can forget about all other areas who just use the wealth that has already been created. That include the world of finance who just keep using the same old wealth, shuffle it and send it from one side of the table to the other, making NO new wealth in process in reality.

Therefore I believe that at the heart of our economic problems is the fact that most of our EU political elite just do not understand the sheer power of innovation and the reason why they never unlock it for our long-term good within the European Union.

Also the EU needs to listen to applied leading innovators and not the plethora of 'academic' professor advisers who have little applied knowledge of how to create anything never mind new multi-billion technological industries from scratch. Indeed for the billions of € paid out to technical advisers over the decades by the EU I have not seen a single new industry emerge that has a turnover in excess of even €1 billion per annum.

There is therefore something fundamentally wrong with how we think in the EU and two of the culprits in my mind as I have said above, is that we have hardly any science or engineering based political leaders if any at all and where most of the EU’s advisers are theoretical and not applied and where they have proved themselves in the past by creating a economic company of note. Until we get the right fundamental thinking it does not matter if we poured €10 billion into EU R&D, it would just fail as the fundamentals are all wrong.

Dr David Hill
World Innovation Foundation
United Kingdom - Switzerland