Welcome
From the
Commissioner
n today’s world, increasingly driven by knowledge
and technology, innovation is the cornerstone of
our economy. It makes almost everything possible.
Without innovation, there can be no jobs, no growth,
and no competitive European Union (EU).
The EU has been beneftting recently from some
light renewed economic growth and job creation.
It reaps the fruits of structural reforms in a number
of Member States coupled with a critical mass of
investment in a smart, innovative and sustainable
industry, including via the EU budget.
However, we – European - might not take this
improvement as a given. Our collective duty is to
keep on nurturing the innovation capacity of the
EU to lay the ground for the future and keep on
delivering on jobs and growth. Competitiveness is
a moving target and we have a great deal of work
ahead of us to make it sustainable, starting at the
grass-root of innovation i.e. research.
The EU has been doing a great deal for a long
time and has reached many successes in the feld
of fundamental research, in particular thanks to the
successive Framework Research programmes.
We face more difculties when it comes to building
on, scaling up and bringing the output of these
fundamental research activities to the market; and
this is precisely where we can create economic value.
Whilst new companies emerge at a similar rate in
Europe as they do, for example, in the US, these new
companies have difculties in scaling up to become
major employers and market leaders.
Against this backdrop, the Commission has
proposed to increase the budget of Horizon Europe
up to EUR 94.1 billion in 2021-2027. This envelope –
the largest ever – refects our collective ambition and
commitment to secure the position of Europe as a
global leader in the feld of research while increasing
signifcantly market penetration. Operationally
speaking, this will translate into grants ofered at
early and pre-commercial stages of the research
projects and a mix of grants and equity fnancing
up to a stage where investors can step in on usual
commercial terms.
By leveraging EUR 650 billion of additional
investment through the new InvestEU, the EU will
further accompany the companies – mostly SMEs
– holding these innovation projects down the road
of fnancial viability. Only after creating a robust eco-
system of healthy companies in the feld of advanced
technology, can economic prosperity last.
In the research and innovation landscape, digital
is undoubtedly one of the most promising areas
including in felds such as artifcial intelligence or
high performance computing. The EU is of course
committed to support these technologies in 2021-
2027. But let us not be blinded by the tremendous
potential of new technologies: digital will create
jobs - for sure, but it will also destroy some. At least it
will massively change existing jobs, in terms of tasks,
relationship between employers and employees
or working conditions. Those changes will have
profound impact on our societies and the EU will
have to take care that citizens are not left by the
wayside. We need to be able to give them at least
indications of where we want to move collectively
and bring the benefts of digital transformation to
our businesses, our public administrations and our
society as a whole. This is the ”raison d’être” of the
new Digital Europe Programme (EUR 9 billion).
The regions will also invest signifcant amounts
in innovation and, by doing so, will play a crucial
role of interface between the EU and the citizens
and in accompanying those changes. In the period
2021-2027, the European Regional Development
Fund (ERDF) will support not only investments into
research and innovation, digitalisation, but also
towards SME competitiveness and skills alignment.
This 10th European Innovation Summit is being
instrumental in contributing to face those huge
challenges ahead and aligning the eforts and
energies towards this great endeavour.
Günther Hermann Oettinger, European
Commissioner for Budget and Human Resources
EIS 2018 / 1
Günther
Hermann
Oettinger