Aho report: Final call for concrete efforts on research and innovation

Ahead of the Spring Summit 2006, an EU study group is calling for a ’pact for research and innovation’, which goes beyond talk on principles and proposes concrete actions.

“Everything on the concepts and practical terms has already been said. It is time to move on and to be much more concrete than we were in Lisbon,” said Esko Aho after the launch of the report ‘Creating an innovative Europe‘ on 20 January 2006. 

The report recommends creating a ‘pact for research and innovation’, a package of synchronised and simultaneous efforts requiring a strong political level commitment at national and European level. ”So far, we have made progress by using the lowest common denominator. If you always do things acceptable to everybody you are not doing anything. To create an innovative society we need to do reforms that are not based on the lowest common denominator,” said Aho. Referring to the implementation of the single market at late 80’s and early 90’s, he said that ”every country needs to accept even negative things to reach the overall goal”. 

One of the report’s main points is the creation of an innovation-friendly market in which businesses can launch new products and services. The report considers e-health, pharmaceuticals, energy, environment, transport and logistics, security and digital content as the top sectors in which the market needs to be urgently created, with public procurement driving the demand. 

“To do this, we need coordinators who can consider all aspects, such as technology investment, infrastructure and provision of services, at the same time, and who can create cross-sectoral processes over organisational borders.” As to the place the high-level independent coordinators proposed for the top-seven sectors would occupy in the political scene, “the division of labour needs to be carefully considered”, said Aho. 

Explaining the ‘paradigm change’ called for in the report, Aho referred to the services directive, which “is a crucial element of innovative Europe”. “We cannot increase resources for research and innovation without having a common market for services“. 

Communicating the paradigm change to people? “We did it with the single market objective and explained that we have to replace national standards with European ones, because it is good for all in a longer term,” replied Aho, underlining the importance of a higher level ‘win-win’ position compared to a short term winner-looser thinking. 

However, the context is no longer the same. The growing euroscepticism and recent violent reactions to the services directive initiative in various EU member states indicate that conveying the message may not be as easy as it was in the late 80’s.

To read the full interview with Esko Aho, click here.

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