Major work has been done in the past two years with the restructuring of the European structural and investment funds and Horizon 2020. Both of these legislation packages were adopted last year with respective budgets of €325bn and €80bn each. Now the focus must shift towards the implementation of the policy, in particular, better spending of the funds for the next period, 2014-2020.
The focus will be on increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the policies and their impact in order to be beneficial for all European citizens and regions and to create more economic growth and jobs.
To help Europe recover from the crisis in a sustainable way, we need actions and investments that help countries and regions unlock new growth potential. European funding will now be directed at innovation, productivity and competitiveness investments. Cohesion policy has earmarked €110bn for bottom-up investments from the universities, research institutes, industry, entrepreneurs and local authorities in building regional specific strengths. The preparation via the smart specialisation strategy creates economic transformation in Europe and therefore provides for more jobs and economic growth.
"To help Europe recover from the crisis in a sustainable way, we need actions and investments that help countries and regions unlock new growth potential"
Member states and regions need to concentrate funding on a limited number of areas of EU relevance. A large share of the European regional development fund will be allocated to four priorities at the centre of the Europe 2020 strategy: innovation and research, the digital agenda. support for small and medium sized companies and the low carbon economy. During the last two years the smart specialisation platform based at the joint research centre of the European commission has been helping regions and member states develop good innovation and digital agenda strategies. In the future they will continue to support them in their monitoring and evaluation.
Regions and member states therefore need to make clear choices about their objectives and their programmes. What I have seen so far is that we have a lack of international cooperation in the partnership agreements. Member states are staring at their own sectors in which the smart specialisation strategy fits but the plan of the European parliament was to connect top players with the upcoming regions so they could get on the 'stairway to excellence'. This will allow a critical mass of resources to be reached ensuring a meaningful impact and guaranteeing that investments are made in those areas that have a direct and immediate impact on growth and jobs in the entire European Union. In order to build critical mass it will be important for governments to create the conditions for knowledge to be captured from partners outside regions and member states. European funds contribute directly to such collaborative projects which are led by indigenous companies and research centres.
Governments will also need to ensure that European structural and investment funds are used to develop the excellence of their research and innovation systems by supporting the best research teams and most innovative companies so that they become more competitive in horizon 2020 calls. Therefore the European parliament has recently decided to continue with a pilot project on the stairway to excellence and with this money six experts have been hired. The European commission smart specialisation platform in Sevilla provides assistance to member states on how to engage in true cross border smart specialisation strategies.
With this approach 2014 will not be a lost year. Partnership agreements with almost all member states have been concluded and operational programmes need to be drafted and concluded before the end of this year. In July 2014 a new European joint undertaking was launched on bio-based industries (BBI). The aim is to trigger investments and create a competitive market for bio-based products and materials sourced locally and 'made in Europe', tackling some of Europe's biggest societal challenges. €3.7bn will be injected into the European economy between 2014 and 2020, €975m from the European commission and €2.7bn from the bio based industries consortium to develop an emerging bio economy sector. Through financing of research and innovation projects, the BBI will create new partnerships across sectors, such as agriculture, agro-food, technology providers, forestry/pulp and paper, chemicals and energy.
"I urge the new Juncker commission to put more emphasis on cross border cooperation in Europe if we want the smart specialisation strategy to become a success."
According to the sixth report on economic, social and territorial cohesion, economic models give an indication of the macro-economic impact. Thanks to cohesion policy it is expected that the main beneficiary countries' GDP could be on average two per cent higher and employment around one per cent higher during the implementation period. These benefits continue after the program has ended. By 2030 it is estimated that GDP in these countries will be on average three per cent above the level if there were not any cohesion investments. The commission's macroeconomic models – Quest and Rhomolo – show that the long-term impact is also positive and significant in the net contributor countries, whereas the short-term impact on demand is small, but the effect on raising productive potential is much larger. The long-term impact comes partly from the increased demand for their exports stemming from cohesion policy programmes carried out in the main beneficiary countries, which also tends to increase in scale over time along with the growth of the latter.
I urge the new Juncker commission to put more emphasis on cross border cooperation in Europe if we want the smart specialisation strategy to become a success.