Brussels - 17 September 2007, The EUREKA Secretariat has communicated to Research Commissioner Janez Potoènik its response on the European Commission’s Green Paper on the European Research Area (ERA). It has congratulated the Commission for initiating an important reflection on the future development of the ERA.
Through this position paper, EUREKA emphasises the central role of business in R&D as a knowledge generator and user, the importance of greater interaction with intergovernmental initiatives and the necessity of fostering public-private partnerships. EUREKA’s role to raise the productivity and competitiveness of European industry and national economies, through its ‘bottom-up’ approach to technological innovation, is an added-value next to other key R&D and innovation initiatives in Europe.
EUREKA remains a key driver within the European Research Area, especially in those technological fields where more intergovernmental coordination and cooperation, based on the principle of variable geometry, is needed. EUREKA expressed how it looks forward to more exchanges of ideas, on those specific issues of the Green Paper, which require special attention and warrant its direct involvement.
Europe has to foster and support high value R&D and innovation-based industry in order to play a leading role at global level. The governance roles played by the Commission and EUREKA have focused, respectively, on R&D and industrial R&D-based innovation. Coordination and synergies will enhance the effectiveness of the overall governance of ERA.
To read EUREKA’s position on the Green Paper visit www.eureka.be