Don’t let Lisbon Treaty woes wreck the innovation agenda

Science|Business Senior Editor Nuala Moran.

The Slovenian Presidency can rightly claim to have given new impetus to the field of knowledge and innovation by setting the Ljubljana Process in motion. Europe’s research ministers were persuaded to throw their collective weight behind ERA, agreeing EU Member States and the European Commission will take joint responsibility for its establishment.

In particular, the Ljubljana Process stresses the need to improve the mobility of researchers, to back this up by creating compatible career structures in different countries, and to modernise universities and research organisations. And significantly, it was agreed that the ERA will only be achieved by drawing together policies on research, education and innovation.

One of the key elements of ERA is the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). At the eleventh hour of their Presidency, the Slovenians managed to end an impasse over where it would be based, confirming Budapest as EIT’s home.

Another important contribution to the high-technology development of the EU was the agreement on implementation of the Galileo European satellite radio navigation programme. The new momentum given to the project should ensure that quality satellite navigation services will be available to all European citizens and companies by 2013.

On the competitiveness front, the Slovenians focused especially on stimulating small and medium-sized enterprises, with measures to reduce administrative burdens and through the launch of Eurostars, which will provide €100 million from Framework Programme 7 to boost the research capacity of SMEs.

Slovenian drive

Alongside these measures to drive the innovation agenda forward, the Slovenian Presidency made progress on what many would consider meatier issues, such as climate change, the liberalisation of the electricity and gas internal market, the stabilisation and integration of the Western Balkans, the long-awaited directive on working time and the directive regulating the working conditions of temporary workers.

There were important environmental measures too, including better waste management, regulation of mercury pollution, new quality standards for water, a carbon dioxide emissions trading scheme.

And – as ever – there were adverse and unexpected events to be dealt with. The Slovenian Presidency had to respond to maybe more than its fair share of these: the turbulence in financial markets, the crisis over rising food, oil and commodities prices, riots in Tibet, the flooding in Myanmar, the earthquake in China.

But then of course, at the end, all these achievements were overshadowed by Ireland’s No vote in the referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

Pick up the pieces

It falls to the French EU Presidency, beginning this week, to pick up the pieces. As we report elsewhere, French diplomats involved in plans to advance the innovation agenda are concerned that dealing with the Lisbon Treaty wreckage will sideline other objectives.

During its presidency, France is pledged to support the Small Business Act, the Lead Markets Initiative, High-Tech Cluster policy, the development of new sources of venture capital funding and a single European court of law for intellectual property disputes.

These are all important, long-awaited and much-needed measures.

Looking at the long list of what Slovenia achieved in the past six months by mixing its limited resources with bags of enthusiasm, let us hope that France can apply its far greater resources and experience to solve the Lisbon Treaty impasse, while picking up where the Slovenians so ably left off, and advance the innovation agenda too.