Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, why is innovation so important for the European Union? We can all see that we are having slight problems with the economy at the moment. If we want the economic situation to improve again, we must take initiatives to get employment rising again, take initiatives to get unemployment to fall, and take initiatives to ensure our continuing prosperity in the future. I believe we also need to be able to assess that objectively. That is why we should use benchmarking. I am very grateful to the Commissioner for putting the innovation scoreboard very much to the fore here, too, because it enables us to see very clearly how the various countries are performing. And, of course, the method of best practice: to see where among our neighbours of the Fifteen in Europe they are working better than in our own countries. That is how it always was for me at school: you can learn from your better classmates. And we shouldn’t just stick to Europe, but we should also be looking in particular at the countries that aspire to join us, to see what they are already doing better than we do. There is an enormous amount of knowledge, a great deal of capacity for innovation, in the technical departments of our universities, as there is of course also in America, Japan, India and many other countries, from which we could benefit. Innovation must not take place only in the economy, but also in the social, cultural and above all the political fields. We would very much like to see publicly sponsored research corrected to make it in future even more geared to the market or, it would perhaps be better to say, to the citizen. Where in future will we find services or products that the citizen would like, that he needs? Such market research will be very important for us in future if we are to see where our innovation policy needs to be focused. Innovation also means repeatedly taking risks, however. We therefore need to ensure that the necessary venture capital is available. It is especially when times are getting hard that funding runs short. We all know that Basle II will perhaps bring a further restriction here, too, especially for smaller firms. Nevertheless – and I would like to correct the text here – we have 18 million SMEs in Europe with fewer than 250 workers. We need to pay particular attention to them, since after all they generate 80% of the tax yield and employ two thirds of the workforce. Innovation must start in the small units. We need subjective innovation; that means combining familiar techniques and technologies, extending them, rethinking where they can be used and where they can be improved. One of the central points is of course life-long on-going and vocational training. Continuing training schemes are becoming increasingly important, and we should therefore also concentrate on the best ways of passing on knowledge. By e-learning – to use the general term – but much more, I believe, by e-entertainment. Learning should be fun, learning should be interesting, learning should make you curious, but learning should also be an adventure. We ought in future to provide an experience primarily with a European content, putting our European values, our European knowledge at centre stage on the Internet and in our education and learning programmes as well as being ready to engage in international competition. We also need new systems in schools, however. We need new methods of quality management for teachers and pupils. ISO 9000 is already taken for granted in firms. It seems to me that these new procedural techniques could also be used to make appreciable progress in schools. But enterprises also need easier access to funding. We need people to start new businesses and the mentality to start new businesses, and we need to make it easier for businesses to pass from one generation to the next. Tax concessions need to be offered and venture capital made available, because the life cycle of a business goes: founded, handed over and finally closed. We need to give thought to all three phases in future.

Political group: PPE-DE