The EU’s forthcoming Industrial Strategy update aims to put Europe’s industry at the core of the Union’s efforts to improve competitiveness. To achieve this, the Union must upgrade its policy and investment framework in a way that supports collaboration on industrial innovation across the EU.
Although the EU has made some gains when it comes to boosting industrial innovation, recently, a disjointed framework has begun to emerge with two separate ‘tiers’ of support: one geared towards key industry initiatives, such as Industrial Alliances and Important Projects of Common European Interest (IPCEIs); the other towards place-based industrial innovation, driven primarily by EU regions, such as Cluster Collaborations and Smart Specialisation Partnerships.
To maximise the impact of these collaborative efforts and to generate a connected, Europe-wide industrial ecosystem, we need an industrial innovation pipeline for the whole of the EU. Amid growing concerns about an uneven recovery from the pandemic, the EU cannot afford to perpetuate the current innovation divide or widen the distance between industrial winners and losers.
The new Industrial Strategy update should, therefore:
- spearhead efforts to close the gap between the EU’s ‘Tier 1’ and ‘Tier 2’ industrial innovation support landscape;
- improve the analysis of the barriers that prevent many EU regional industrial innovation systems from flourishing; and
- promote an ‘Innovation Everywhere’ agenda, focusing on EU territories where industrial innovation continues to fall behind.
Read the full paper here.