Enter Germany – but where has innovation gone?

The bad news is that this is the only new idea designed to boost innovation in Europe put forward by the German government as it takes over the six-month rotating presidency of the now 27-member European Union from Finland.

With the handover comes a change in priorities that sees domestic issues such as making Europe a more dynamic and innovative economy replaced at the top of the agenda by international issues including forging closer, bilateral economic ties with the United States and improving relations with Russia.

“The German Presidency plans to launch an initiative for a charter on the handling of intellectual property at public research institutions and universities and thus help improve cooperation between these institutions and the business sector,” the German government wrote in its presidency’s programme.

The idea of creating a royalty-sharing scheme to encourage universities to participate in research with companies was mooted during discussions last year about how to spend the Union’s roughly €50 billion R&D budget for the next seven years.

The German government couldn’t give details of the charter. A diplomat in Brussels said his government will discuss the idea with the scientific community before tabling a concrete plan.

“The work on this charter will start in the German presidency but it will take much longer to conclude,” the diplomat said, asking not to be named.

“There is still a lot of mistrust of the business world in many of Europe’s universities and research institutes. Some have their own charters forbidding them from reaping financial gain from their research,” said Mark McGann, director general of EICTA, a trade group representing some of Europe’s largest hardware and software companies including Finnish mobile phone company Nokia and the Dutch and German technology giants Philips and Siemens.

“The problem in Europe is that in most countries businesses and universities operate in completely different worlds even when they may be researching related subjects,” he added, welcoming Germany’s attempt to bridge the science/business divide.

Work to start ‘soon’

The German diplomat said his government would start work on the charter idea as soon as the European Commission published its strategy for improving the whole patent regime in the Union.

The European Commissioner in charge of the internal market, Charlie McCreevy, made huge efforts in 2006 to re-energise the decades-long debate about creating a Community Patent, but his efforts were shot down by several countries, including France.

In spite of the obstacles, McCreevy vowed to draw up a strategy for improving the patchwork of national patent jurisdictions, probably in the first quarter of this year.

The German presidency will support McCreevy’s efforts, the diplomat said. “All we can do is support the Commission,” he said.

Similarly, the German presidency will work on the Commission idea to create a European Institute of Technology. “We have set up an extra working group to take forward the work on the EIT,” the diplomat said.

“During our presidency you can expect a broader debate on the EIT’s governing structures and its financing,” he said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel was initially sceptical about the EIT idea, which has been championed by Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso. The Commission dropped the idea of a large central campus, and instead proposed creating a network including institutes and universities that already exist, with a small central structure.

“The Commission has moved considerably in the direction we preferred all along,” the diplomat said.

EICTA’s McGann said he was disappointed to see innovation and the all the similar goals loosely referred to as the revised Lisbon process slip down the political agenda. “It’s unfortunate that Lisbon-related initiatives are not at the forefront of the German presidency,” he said.