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# 52014SC0181

**COMMISSION STAFF WORKING DOCUMENT State of the Innovation Union - Taking Stock 2010-2014 Accompanying the document COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, THE COUNCIL, THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMITTEE AND THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS Research and innovation as sources of renewed growth /\* SWD/2014/0181 final \*/**

  

State of the Innovation Union

Taking stock 2010 – 2014

Table of contents

Executive
summary. 4

Strengthening the knowledge base and reducing fragmentation. 8

1. Key messages. 8

2. Progress so far 9

Commitment
1: Put in place national strategies to train enough researchers. 9

Commitment
2 – part 1: Test feasibility of independent university ranking. 11

Commitment
2 – part 2: Create business-academia Knowledge Alliances. 12

Commitment
3: Propose an integrated framework for e-skills. 13

Commitment
4: Propose an ERA framework and supporting measures. 15

Commitment
4.1 - Comparable research careers structures. 16

Commitment
4.2 - Innovative Doctoral training. 17

Commitment
4.3 – Creation of a Pan-European Pension Fund for Researchers. 18

Commitment
5: Construct the priority European research infrastructures. 18

Commitment
6: Simplify and focus the future EU R&I programmes on Innovation Union. 20

Commitment
7: Ensure stronger involvement of SMEs in future EU R&I programmes. 21

Commitment
8: Strengthen the science base for policy making through JRC and create EFFLA.. 22

Commitment
9: Set out an EIT Strategic Innovation Agenda. 23

Getting good ideas to market 25

1. Key messages. 25

2. Progress so far 25

Commitment
10 – Put in place EU level financial instruments to attract private finance. 25

Commitment
11 – Ensure cross-border operation of venture capital funds. 26

Commitment
12 – Strengthen cross-border matching of innovative firms with investors. 27

Commitment
13 – Review State Aid Framework for R&D&I. 28

Commitment
14 – Deliver the EU Patent 29

Commitment
15 – Screen the regulatory framework in key areas. 31

Commitment
16 – Speed up and modernise standard-setting. 32

Commitment
17 – Set aside dedicated national procurement budgets for innovation; Set up a
EU level support mechanism and facilitate joint procurement. 33

Commitment
18 – Present an eco-innovation action plan. 36

Commitment
19- Part 1 – Establish a European Creative Industries Alliance. 38

Commitment
19- Part 2 – Set up a European Design Leadership board. 39

Commitment
20 – Promote open access; support smart research information services. 41

Commitment
21 – Facilitate collaborative research and knowledge transfer 43

Commitment
22 – Develop a European knowledge market for patents and licencing. 44

Commitment
23 – Safeguard against the use of IPRs for anti-competitive purposes. 45

Maximising social and territorial cohesion. 47

1. Key messages. 47

2. Progress so far 47

Commitment
24 and 25 – Improve the use of structural funds for research and innovation. 47

Commitment
26 – Launch a Social Innovation pilot; promote social innovation in European
Social Fund  50

Commitment
27 – Support a research programme on public sector and social innovation; pilot
a European Public Sector Innovation Scoreboard. 51

Commitment
28 – Consult social partners on interaction between the knowledge economy and
the labour market 53

Pooling forces to achieve breakthroughs: European Innovation
Partnerships 55

1. Key messages. 55

2. Progress so far 55

Commitment
29 – Pilot and present proposals for European Innovation Partnerships. 55

Leveraging our policies externally. 61

1. Key messages. 61

2. Progress so far 61

Commitment
30 – Put in place integrated policies to attract global talent 61

Commitment
31 – Propose common EU/Member States priorities and approaches for scientific
cooperation with third countries. 62

Commitment
32 – Roll out global research infrastructures. 64

Making it happen. 65

1. Key messages. 65

2. Progress so far 65

Commitment
33 – Member States R&I Systems. 65

Commitment
34 – Develop an Innovation Headline Indicator and monitor progress using
Innovation Union Scoreboard. 67

Innovation
Convention 2011 and 2014. 69

Progress on Innovation Union Commitments 70

Executive
summary

The Innovation
Union was placed at the heart of the Europe 2020 strategy in 2010 with the aim
to foster Europe's capacity to innovate. Innovation is indeed considered
essential to preserve and improve Europe's competitiveness and its ability to
create jobs and to tackle societal challenges. Four years after its launch,
this Staff Working Document (SWD) takes stock of how it has been implemented
and what first results it has delivered, keeping in mind that the Innovation
Union is a ten years long strategy.

The Innovation
Union is succeeding in building momentum around innovation, mobilising
stakeholders and mainstreaming innovation in key European, national and
regional policies.

Notably, the European
budget allocated to research and innovation was increased, despite a decrease
in the overall EU budget for 2014-2020. Also, despite the economic crisis, the Union has made progress towards its R&D investment target of 3%. This is a clear sign
that the EU is prioritising growth and jobs.

Considerable
measures have also been taken to ensure that the R&I budget is well spent,
including through simplification of programme architecture and participation
rules in Horizon 2020, the deployment of European Research Area (ERA) measures
and the development of an indicator to monitor innovation output.

As a
comprehensive strategy, the Innovation Union addresses a wide range of elements
that impact Europe's innovation eco-system and is succeeding in changing it. Excellent
progress has been made in delivering on each of the Innovation Union blocks:

·
Strengthening the knowledge base and reducing
fragmentation

The knowledge
base in Europe is being strengthened, notably through the launch of Horizon
2020, the focusing of European Regional Development Funds on smart
specialisation strategies, progress towards the European Research Area, and
support for skills development. Within Horizon 2020, the new research and
innovation framework programme, red tape was sensibly reduced, so as to allow
wider, more competitive participation. All phases of the innovation cycle are
now funded under a single programme, making sure that the knowledge produced
can be better exploited for the realisation of new products and services. More
private investment has been secured to address major societal challenges while
boosting Europe's industrial competitiveness.

Public-private
and public-public partnerships are one of the key elements of Horizon 2020. The
private sector has committed to invest nearly €10 billion in Joint Technology
Initiatives stimulating innovation in areas such as aeronautics,
medicines, electronic components and systems, transport and bio-based
industries, while contributing to reverse the declining role of industry in Europe. In addition, eight contractual Public Private Partnerships have been launched in
areas such as green cars, energy efficient buildings and cleaner manufacturing
processes, photonics and next generation internet. These partnerships are
expected to leverage more than €6 billion of investments with substantial
impact on the competitiveness of the EU industry and essential to address
societal challenges.

The 2012
Communication on ERA helped to identify key measures to optimise the
effectiveness of investment in R&D as well as to consolidate the
partnership. The ERA Progress report also provides a factual basis to assess
progress in key areas and work has started so as to assess the potential
economic impact of these reforms.

Fragmentation is
being reduced as well through better linkages between academia and business,
between public and the private sectors and between sectors. Due to measures
favouring researchers' mobility it is easier for European and third country
researchers to develop their work anywhere in the continent.

·
Getting ideas to market

Great efforts
have been made in delivering the tools for a more innovation-friendly business
environment in Europe, such as the unitary patent and the revised public
procurement directives which offer better opportunities for innovating.

Instruments to ease
access to finance are in place and are about to start delivering, including
reinforced debt and equity facilities and the venture capital passport. Such newly
launched mechanisms and initiatives provide substantial support for innovation by
leveraging the engagement of industry and business. Measures to overcome the
insufficient availability of finance in Europe, a major obstacle to getting
innovations to the market, have been put in place: the Risk-Sharing Finance
Facility, jointly set up by the European Commission with the European
Investment Bank Group, has ensured that for every billion euro of EU budget
money the EIB has mobilised €12 billion in loans and over €30 billion in final
R&I investment. This has led to additional resources of up to €40 billion
since 2007 for research and innovation activities which would otherwise be left
unfunded. Moreover, a specific SME instrument scheme was created to support
SMEs in realising their best ideas.

While public intervention has in the past typically been used to stimulate the
supply of research and new knowledge, over recent years it has increasingly
been used to stimulate the demand for innovation with instruments such as
pre-commercial public procurement, innovation-friendly regulation and
standards-setting. For instance, procurement of innovation was facilitated
through the development of modernised procurement directives, a methodology for
the screening of regulation in terms of its impact on innovation was developed
and tested by the Commission, the eco-innovation action plan was launched, and
standard setting was modernised and made faster.

·
Maximising social and territorial cohesion

The Innovation
Union has also tackled the challenge of territorial and social cohesion. For
instance, smart specialisation strategies have been established as an ex-ante
conditionality for investment priorities under research, technological
development and innovation. The aim is to promote a better innovation
performance across European regions and Member States, without compromising on
excellence.

The increased
emphasis on social and public sector innovation is ensuring a broader uptake
and societal impact of innovation, as well as a change of mind-set with regards
to who should be concerned by innovation and who can be an actor of change in
the EU. In particular, momentum is building around public sector innovation,
where actions undertaken went beyond the initial expectations of the Innovation
Union.

·
The European Innovation Partnerships

The European
Innovation Partnerships (EIPs) have presented a new approach to EU research and
innovation. Five EIPs have been launched in key areas of active and healthy ageing,
water, agriculture, raw materials and smart cities. They are now all in the
implementation stage, having identified priorities, engaging a wide range of
partners across the demand and supply sides of innovation, and starting to
deliver first results. An independent evaluation of the overall performance of
the EIPs has concluded that there are sound reasons for the EU to continue
promoting the EIP approach, provided that the EIPs target systemic innovation
with a strong focus on diffusion of innovation.

·
Leveraging our policies externally

The global
dimension of innovation has equally been taken into account. Several
initiatives have been developed to increase Europe’s attractiveness as a
research and innovation destination and partnerships between the EU and its Member States have been strengthened in the definition of priorities for cooperation with
third countries, including with regards to the development of global research
infrastructures.

·
Making it happen

Progress in
Europe and Member State’s innovation performance has been monitored in the
framework of the integrated economic coordination (‘European Semester’),
through the Innovation Union Scoreboard and the Innovation Union
Competitiveness Report. This will be continued and improved through the Policy
Support Facility under Horizon 2020. Exchange of best practices and mutual
learning have equally been facilitated by the EU. In order to better monitor
how well the expenditure in R&I is delivering results, an innovation output
indicator has been developed. It allows a measure of the ability of the economy
to transform knowledge into successful marketable innovations, so as to inform
policy makers about the effectiveness of their expenditure in R&I and
innovation eco-system.

Over the past
years, a fundamental shift in the right direction has happened, reducing the
innovation performance gap with our main competitors. The
latest Innovation Union Scoreboard shows that, since 2008,
the EU has managed to close almost half of its innovation performance gap with
the US and Japan. Nevertheless, the gap with South Korea is widening and China is quickly catching up. As a consequence, we should not be content with the results
achieved and stop paying the necessary attention to Europe's innovation
performance. The EU, its Member States and other stakeholders need to continue
working together to improve the European innovation eco-system.

Some important
gaps remain and need to be filled in order to turn Europe into a more
innovative society. The experience gained in the first years of implementation
of the Innovation Union is useful in identifying needs for exploring better
responses to Europe’s innovation-related issues.

The eco-system
for innovation has been greatly improved by putting in place key single market
measures. Nevertheless, inconsistencies of rules and practices remain and
are hampering the development of high growth innovative firms, which often
find it too burdensome and risky to operate on other European markets. This
reduces the diffusion of innovative products and services and limits the
chances for the emergence of new ones. The prospects of a full roll-out of
the single market would indeed be a major driver of investment and
innovation, including through the exploitation of digital technologies.

Closer
involvement of society has proven to be key in fostering a wider
innovation culture in Europe. It should be promoted in all phases of the
innovation cycle so as to make innovation more relevant and acceptable and
to improve its uptake.

The public
sector is increasingly recognised as a key driver of innovation. While its
role in promoting innovation through regulation, fiscal policies, standard
setting, procurement and supply-side policies has been tested in the past
– and although there is room for an increased uptake of such tools in the
future and for a better mix of supply and demand policies – its capacity
to innovate itself so as to become more user-friendly, efficient and
effective should be further explored.

Not all
citizens and firms are on an equal footing with regards to innovation
capacities and access to the benefits of innovation. Improving the
inclusiveness of innovation appears to be increasingly important. At the
same time, innovation can help lagging regions transform their economies and
make them more competitive. Moreover, the benefits derived from the
roll-out of smart specialisation strategies for research and innovation
could be multiplied through better linkages across regions, allowing for
the development of complementarities and European value chains.

Despite great
progress made through the EIT, the Knowledge Alliances and other skills
development schemes, skills shortage and mismatch is still important. It
does not only concern sector-specific skills, but also numeracy and
literacy skills, as well as the ‘21st century skills’ for
creativity and entrepreneurial spirit.

Innovation is
becoming more central to our economy and to our society. As illustrated in
this SWD, all of the Innovation Union commitments are currently on course,
setting the building blocks for increased growth and jobs. To continue to
reap the fruit of all the measures that the Innovation Union has put in
motion, it is now essential to ensure their full roll-out and use as well
as to anticipate, where possible, further actions to optimise their
impact, based on the lessons learnt during the first years of
implementation.
Strengthening
the knowledge base and reducing fragmentation        
1.
Key messages

Good progress
has been achieved in setting the basis for strengthening Europe's knowledge
base and reducing its fragmentation.

The launch of
the new EU research and innovation framework programme, Horizon 2020, and the
development of ERA measures are important stepping stones in the path to a more
research and innovation friendly environment in Europe.

Horizon 2020 is
the biggest EU research and innovation framework programme ever launched, with
over €80 billion dedicated to excellent research, industrial leadership and key
societal challenges. It contributes to strengthening the knowledge base in Europe not only by funding research, but also by mainstreaming funding for activities in
all stages of the innovation cycle, from frontier research to close-to-market
innovation. It supports and encourages the participation of businesses,
including SMEs. In parallel, billions are being invested in innovation-driven
public private partnerships.

Key measures
have been defined and put in place to attract more people to science and train
enough researchers, in particular in the framework of the European Research
Area.

The ERA is also
contributing to reducing the fragmentation of the knowledge base in Europe, by putting in place measures aiming at facilitating the mobility of researchers
across borders and across business and academia, among others. The recently
launched U-multirank also contributes to this goal by improving the
comparability of Higher Education Institutions based on broader criteria than
other international university rankings. Also better coordination among
European policies, for instance through the Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs,
is key to reach this goal.

Examples of
other measures that both strengthen Europe's knowledge base and reduce its
fragmentation through better opportunities for linkages between business and
academia include activities by the EIT KICs, the Knowledge Alliances, the
development of the Innovative Doctoral Training Principles and the Maria
Skłodowska Curie actions under Horizon 2020.

A better mapping
of specific needs for research and innovation has been made possible, through a
strengthened cooperation between the policy directorates of the Commission and
the Joint Research Centre as well as due to the work carried out by the European
Forum for Forward Looking Activities (EFFLA).

These actions
are already providing valuable results and contributions to Europe's innovation
eco-system. Nevertheless, it is too early to assess their full long term impact.
For instance, Horizon 2020 was launched in 2014, but it will take some time
before the projects and actions funded bear fruit.

Some gaps also remain
in the implementation of the actions stemming from the commitments of the
Innovation Union in this area. In particular, better coordination between
policies at the European and Members States level would be highly profitable,
notably with regards to researchers' mobility, open recruitment and uptake of
the Innovative Doctoral Training Principles.

2.
Progress so far
Commitment 1:
Put in place national strategies to train enough researchers

"By the end of 2011, Member States should have strategies in
place to train enough researchers to meet their national R&D targets and to
promote attractive employment conditions in public research institutions.
Gender and dual career considerations should be fully taken into account in
these strategies."

Over the past
years, Member States have introduced a range of measures, programmes,
strategies and legislative acts to address the barriers to an open and
attractive European labour market for researchers.

The Researchers
Report 2013[1] showed that the vast majority of countries reported new measures to
train enough researchers to meet their national targets. This includes mainly
three strands of measures: a) measures that national authorities and/or
institutions have put in place to attract people to take science to an advanced
level and thus potentially to become researchers; b) measures to enhance the
quality and efficiency of doctoral training and provide life-long learning to
researchers in accordance with national priorities and industry requirements; c)
measures aiming to develop doctoral training in cooperation with industry so as
to better link academia and the industry sector, leading to the development of
projects of common interest and to an increased exploitation of research
results by the enterprises.[2] The ERA Progress Report 2013[3]
shows that incentives and/or strategies for gender
equality in research are, to various degrees, in place in at least 18 Member
States. It also shows that awareness programmes to
attract girls to science and women to research are enforced by more than one
third of Member States.

A series of EU
policy initiatives such as the development of the EURAXESS network, in
particular a large increase in the use of EURAXESS Jobs, the ‘Scientific Visa
Directive’ (see commitment 30), a Human Resources Strategy for Researchers
based on the Charter and Code,[4] and Principles of Innovative Doctoral Training have contributed to
this progress. Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions (MSCA) contribute to
influencing ERA by setting standards for research training, attractive
employment conditions and open recruitment for all EU-researchers, and by
aligning national resources as well as influencing regional or national
programmes through the co-fund mechanism.

Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions (MSCA) in Horizon 2020

65,000 researchers will be funded under MSCA in Horizon 2020. All of
them will receive high quality research training and excellent career
opportunities in both public and private sectors. The MSCA are exemplary in the
way they have integrated the principles set out in the European Charter for
Researchers and the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers, notably
by providing employment contracts with full social security coverage to Marie
Curie fellows, offering outstanding career development opportunities to the
researchers funded by the programme and using open, transparent, impartial and
equitable methods for their selection and recruitment. All MSCA funded jobs are
systematically published on the EURAXESS Jobs portal where a dedicated search
directory has been set up. Gender is of particular concern to MSCA funding. The
programme aims to increase women's participation in research through practices
of equal treatment and family-friendly measures (a dedicated family allowance
under Horizon 2020). The Career Restart Panel also helps those who wish to
resume a career in research after a break.

Through the COFUND mechanism, extended in Horizon 2020 to doctoral
programmes, the relevant regional, national and international actors introduce
or further develop the transnational dimension of their offers. Moreover, they
will be encouraged to align the practices of their doctoral and fellowship
programmes with the EU principles on Innovative Doctoral Training.

“EURAXESS –
Researchers in Motion” is a pan-European initiative across 40 countries[5] that aims to facilitate
the mobility of researchers and enhance scientific collaboration between Europe and the world. The EURAXESS member countries have underlined their commitment to
contribute to policy initiatives at both national and European level, by
promoting the EURAXESS Jobs portal and improving outreach to industry partners
who have specific needs.

Researchers can
find more than 8,000 research-related offers on EURAXESS Jobs on any given day.
In 2013, more than 40,000 jobs were published online compared with 7,500 in
2010. This excellent progress, which is helping to match demand and supply
across borders, is due to concerted efforts by the Commission, several Member
States and institutions to ensure that a much larger proportion of research
vacancies are posted on the portal, e.g, the inclusion of vacancies from major
job providers such as Naturejobs, AcademicTransfer (NL), Galaxie (FR), CINECA
(IT) and Focus Research (BE). Some countries have also adopted national
legislation to make it mandatory for publicly funded institutions to advertise
their positions at EURAXESS Jobs (e.g. Poland, Croatia, Italy).

Researchers
relocating in one of the 40 countries across Europe can also rely on the
personalised assistance provided by the EURAXESS Service Centres. Since 2009
nearly one million researchers’ queries have been treated.

With regards to
the promotion of attractive employment conditions, EU Member States and
Associated Countries continue to support the implementation of the European
Charter & Code (C&C) which aims to improve researchers’ working conditions.
In particular, the European Charter for Researchers addresses the roles,
responsibilities and entitlements of researchers and their employers or funding
organisations. The Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers aims to
improve recruitment, to make selection procedures fairer and more transparent
and proposes different means of judging merit.  More than 480 organisations
from 35 countries in Europe and beyond have explicitly endorsed the principles
underlying the C&C and the level of institutional endorsements of the
C&C principles continues to grow. The Commission’s Human Resources Strategy
for Researchers focuses on the practical implementation of the C&C
principles. More than 300 universities, research institutes and funders participate
in it. So far, 178 'HR Excellence in Research' logos have been awarded to
acknowledge their efforts.

Europe has
relatively few researchers employed in industry, making up only 45% of total
researchers compared with 78% in the US, 74% in Japan and 62% in China.[6] At the same time Europe continues to train an increasing number of
PhDs (from around 72,000 in 2000 to 115,000 graduates in 2010). Although the
nature of PhD training is diversifying and the majority of PhD graduates embark
on careers outside of academia (evidence shows that in France, Germany and the
UK over 50% of all PhD degree holders now take up jobs outside academia), early
stage researchers are often inadequately informed about career paths outside of
academia and have insufficient experience in industry and other relevant
employment sectors. Only one in ten early-stage researchers reported receiving
training in entrepreneurship or intellectual property rights during their PhD.

As a response,
the Commission has worked with experts from industry, academia, and national
research ministries to prepare seven Principles for Innovative Doctoral
Training,[7]
to foster excellence and a critical mind-set and provide young researchers with
transferable skills and exposure to industry and other employment sectors. The
Council of Ministers has endorsed these principles and has called on Member
States and universities to provide financial support (see Commitment 4).

The MSCA will
enable around 25,000 doctoral candidates (around 3% of the total number in the
EU) to be recruited by 2020 to high-quality programmes in Europe. These will
provide experience outside academia, hence developing increased employability
skills amongst PhD holders.

A number of
challenges remain and a coordinated effort by Member States and institutions is
needed to remove remaining obstacles to researcher mobility, training and
attractive careers. This includes ensuring that all research positions are
subject to open, transparent and merit-based recruitment practices. Member
States, research funding and research performing organisations are also
encouraged to promote a wider uptake of the innovative doctoral training
principles, including, where appropriate, through use of the European
Structural and Investment Funds.

The Commission
is therefore working closely with the ERA Steering Group on Human Resources and
Mobility, composed of Member State representatives on a range of initiatives
related to an open labour market for researchers with ERA. In particular, two
Working Groups have been formed to tackle the issues of Innovative Doctoral
Training and the Professional Development of Research Careers. This will
include the development of a toolkit for those looking to implement the
Innovative Doctoral Training principles.

Commitment 2 – part 1: Test feasibility of independent university ranking

"In 2011 the Commission will, on the basis of the current
preparatory work, support an independent multi-dimensional international
ranking system to benchmark university performance. This will allow the best
performing European universities to be identified. In 2011 further steps will
be proposed in a Communication on the reform and modernisation of higher
education."

Higher education
institutions play an important role in several areas, including teaching,
research knowledge transfer, international positioning and regional engagement.
In order to reform higher education in Europe, increased transparency about how
Europe's higher education institutions perform on each one of these dimensions
is needed. To this end, the Commission has been working on the delivery of a
new, independent and multidimensional ranking system to benchmark Higher Education
Institutions (HEIs) performance, U-Multirank.

U-Multirank
differs from existing world rankings by having a multidimensional, user-driven
approach to international ranking of higher education institutions. It takes a
holistic approach to rankings with the following five dimensions: teaching and
learning, research, knowledge transfer, international orientation and regional
engagement. There is no pre-defined weighting to the dimensions and indicators,
unlike existing world rankings (which emphasise research through a composite
indicator that accounts for around 60% of the individual ranking place). As a result,
it provides a more rounded approach to measuring university performance, by
assessing all aspects of University activity, and it provides an overview of
the diversity of European higher education, identifying the outstanding
performers across all areas where HEIs are active.

This ranking is
user-driven, as it allows users to develop personalised rankings by selecting
indicators in terms of their own preferences and provides both ranking of whole
institutions and of disciplines. The four disciplines in the 2014 ranking are: 
business studies, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and physics.

The first
U-Multirank results, with more than 500 HEIs (whole institutions) and 1272
disciplines (four discipline-specific rankings) were published in May 2014. In
addition, over 360 institutions were included on the basis of publicly
available data (from bibliometric and patent databases) mainly in the area of
research and knowledge transfer. Participating institutions come from 70
countries around the world. Around 62 % of all institutions are from Europe, 17
% from North America, 14 % from Asia and 7 % from Oceania, Latin America and Africa. .

U-Multirank is an
important tool for every stakeholder involved: for policy makers as a
transparency tool to reform higher education based on the inherent strengths of
individual HEIs and thus build diversity and specialisation within European
higher education; for students to make informed choices of where to study; for
HEIs to seek partners and compare performance with their peers; and for
business to find suitable partners for cooperation.

U-Multirank will
publish three additional rankings in 2015, 2016 and 2017 before an independent
organisation (independent from the Commission, member states and higher education
institutions) is established in 2017. The European Commission will fund
U-Multirank until the independent organisation is created.

Commitment 2 – part 2: Create business-academia Knowledge Alliances

"The Commission will also support business-academia
collaborations through the creation of "Knowledge Alliances" between
education and business to develop new curricula addressing innovation skills
gaps. They will help universities to modernise towards inter-disciplinarity,
entrepreneurship and stronger business partnerships."

Knowledge
Alliances are structured partnerships bringing together higher education
institutions and companies with the aim to design and deliver new curricula and
courses, to develop new and innovative ways of teaching and learning, to
facilitate the flow of knowledge between higher education and companies, to
stimulate interdisciplinary activities/learning and to develop entrepreneurial
skills and attitudes. Knowledge Alliances cover a comprehensive set of
different activities, including for example exchanges of students/academics and
company staff.

The ultimate
goal of the Knowledge Alliances is to stimulate innovation in and through
higher education and to make the cooperation between higher education and
business a more common feature in European higher education systems.

The Commission
launched the first call for the creation of the first three Knowledge Alliances
pilot projects in 2011, which was followed by a second one in 2012. Both calls
were supported with €1 M provided by the European Parliament each and both met
with high interest (93 and 103 applications respectively) and provided a very
strong proof of concept.

Following their
success, in 2013 the Knowledge Alliances were integrated into the last call for
proposals under the Lifelong Learning Programme (2007-2013) and were included
in the Commission's proposal for the Erasmus+ programme, with an expected
output of around 150 Knowledge Alliances over the funding period (2014-2020).

Commitment 3:
Propose an integrated framework for e-skills

"In 2011, the Commission will propose an integrated framework
for the development and promotion of e-skills for innovation and
competitiveness, based on partnerships with stakeholders. This will be based on
supply and demand, pan-European guidelines for new curricula, quality labels
for industry-based training and awareness-raising activities."

The growth, competitiveness and innovation capability of European
industry as well as social cohesion are increasingly dependent on the strategic
and efficient use of information and communication technologies (ICT), as well
as the knowledge, skills, competences and inventiveness of the European
workforce and citizens.

There is broad consensus about the crucial importance of the
long-term challenge of e-skills for Europe. As new technologies are developing
rapidly, e-skills are increasingly sophisticated and need to be constantly
updated. With demand for skilled ICT practitioners exceeding supply, Europe could face a shortage of up to 560,000 ICT workers in 2015 which could exceed 1
million by 2020. There is a critical need for individuals with e-skills as well
as creativity, innovation and higher-level conceptual skills.

In response to this challenge, over the period 2010-2014 several
important results have been delivered at EU level.

Foresight scenarios on the supply and demand (2015-2020) including
individual country reports, an analysis of the impact of cloud computing, of
cybersecurity, green IT and global sourcing on e-skills have been developed.

In 2012, two seminal reports on 'e-Skills and ICT Professionalism:
Fostering a European ICT profession' and on 'e-Leadership: Vision, Roadmap and
Foresight Scenarios' presented a clear vision and roadmap (2014-2020) for the
promotion of ICT professionalism and of e-leadership in Europe.

The European e-Competence Framework 3.0 (e-CF) has been released in
December 2013 by the European Standardisation Committee (CEN). It constitutes a
basis for the development of the ICT profession together with bodies of
knowledge, ethics and education and training. It has already been adopted by
several countries as a national standard, e.g. Italy and the Netherlands, and should become a European standard in 2015. Based on the e-CF online
self-assessment tools have been developed, e.g. by CEPIS and EXIN, and
proposals for quality labels for IT industry training and certification have
been released. The proposed labels are based on the e-Competence Framework and
EQAVET (the European Quality Assurance in Vocational Education and Training) enabling
to make it possible to distinguish different types of training and
certification referenced against the e-Competence Framework.  Leading IT
companies have now been able to map their IT training courses and
certifications against the e-CF, e.g. as Microsoft, Cisco, CompTIA, HP etc.

In 2013, e-leadership skills have started to become an issue in
policy and multi-stakeholder initiatives of 21 of 27 EU Member States.
Developments are still in their infancy, though, with the exception of Denmark, Germany, Finland, Malta, the Netherlands and the UK. These skills have only become an issue
in countries which rank at the top in Europe in terms the propensity for a
country to exploit the opportunities offered by ICT.

A complementary initiative on the development of common bodies of
knowledge has been launched in January 2014 and future work will also address
the issue of professional ethics. The first conference on the international
dimension of e-skills and ICT professionalism on 26 March 2014 in Brussels
attracted leading experts from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Japan, India,
Malaysia, Russia, South Africa and the USA.

To raise awareness on e-skills and the demand for highly skilled
digital jobs the Commission organised the e-Skills Week (26-30 March 2012).
This initiative demonstrated a strong mobilisation of stakeholders in a wide
range of pan-European and national activities including 2.235 events involving
over 1.8 million participants in 37 European countries. New 'e-Skills for
Jobs"' campaigns will be organised over the period 2014-2016 with a view
to reach larger target groups. As a result, numerous multi-stakeholder
partnerships have been launched and in March 2014 a comprehensive analysis of
the situation in Europe has been released: 'e-Skills in Europe: Measuring
progress and Moving Ahead' including the benchmarking of Member States policies
and over 100 multi-stakeholder partnerships.

The analysis of national policy and initiatives in the ICT domain
across EU Member States shows high or even very high levels of activity in many
countries not only in the digital literacy domain but also in the e-skills area
where the focus is on ICT practitioners. The group of leading countries
includes the UK and Ireland. Belgium, Germany, Denmark, France, Malta the Netherlands and Sweden also perform strongly in terms of the level of activity for
ensuring adequate supply of ICT practitioners on the labour market. There are
clear indications that the e-skills agenda and the subsequent initiatives by
the Commission including the e-Skills Manifesto in 2012 have triggered Member
States to engage in public debates about the e-skills issue and helped them to
develop appropriate responses. However, the degree of integration and
consistency of policy-making is still limited in a significant number of Member
States. Many countries lack a master strategy or the topic still does not
attract continuous attention in policy-making across the different policy areas
concerned. Typically, measures are taken for adapting the education system to
the demands of a knowledge-based economy, but in some countries little
reference is being made to ICT practitioner skills and the need to boost supply
of suitably qualified ICT professionals.

Building on the strong interest of stakeholders, President
Barroso, Vice-Presidents Kroes and Tajani, Commissioners Andor and
Vassiliou launched the 'Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs' in March 2013 at the
conference on 'e-Skills and Education for Digital Jobs'. This initiative aims to
further raise the profile of current efforts and increase the overall supply of
ICT professionals and to match supply and demand of digital skills better. The
goal is to start to increase the supply of ICT practitioners by 2015, so as to
ensure a sufficient number in Europe by 2020. The initial mandate of the Grand
Coalition runs from 2013 to 2015 with a review foreseen at the end of this
term. The results of the Grand Coalition are encouraging: we have received more
than 40 pledges so far, including from large companies, e.g. Google,
Telefonica, SAP, Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle etc. Pledges have come in also from
smaller companies, education providers and NGOs, while policy-makers all over Europe and the European Council (24-25 October 2014) have provided strong political support
to the initiative. In addition, National Coalitions are being developed in more
than 10 Member States with the aim of facilitating action at local level. For
example, Lithuania and Poland have officially launched their national coalitions.

The main priorities for the future (2014-2020) will be the promotion
of ICT professionalism and e-leadership and the generation of a larger talent
pool of ICT professionals, entrepreneurs, business leaders, managers and
advanced users with a focus on the strategic use of new information and
communication technologies. After a continuous decline since 2006, the supply
of ICT practitioners has started to improve slowly after 2009. This promising
trend must be sustained to maximise the benefits for Europe of the digital
economy.

Commitment 4:
Propose an ERA framework and supporting measures

"In 2012, the Commission will propose a
European Research Area framework and supporting measures to remove obstacles to
mobility and cross-border co-operation, aiming for them to be in force by end
2014."

In 2012 the
Commission adopted the Communication 'A Reinforced European Research Area
Partnership for Excellence and Growth' which sets out five priorities: more
effective national research and innovation systems, optimal transnational
cooperation and competition (including research infrastructures), an open
labour market for researchers, gender equality and gender mainstreaming in
research and optimal circulation, access to and transfer of scientific knowledge.
For each priority, the Communication presents a series of actions to be
undertaken by Member States, Stakeholder Organisations and the Commission. It
also announces the setting up of the ERA Monitoring Mechanism to identify
progress in ERA.

Alongside the
ERA Communication, the Commission launched a Stakeholder Platform in which
currently six European stakeholder organisations (SHO) take part.[8]
These SHO have agreed to work together with the Commission towards the
implementation of ERA. The Platform provides a forum where they interact
regularly to explore the best ways to facilitate the implementation of the key
ERA priorities.

In 2013 the
Commission presented the first ERA Progress Report, which included a thorough
presentation of the state of play of ERA in the Member States and some
Associated Countries as well as indications of ERA implementation by research
performing organisations. Structural reforms are already being implemented at Member State level, and ERAC[9]
has become a major forum of policy exchanges between Member States in terms of
research policy.

Almost all SHO
published a report on how they have progressed towards ERA. The reports shows
real progress has been made by the members of the SHO, especially in fields
such as research infrastructures, doctoral training, gender policy and open
access to publications. However, cross border research cooperation would need
more support to achieve its full potential.

The
Competitiveness Council, on 21 February 2014, acknowledged that "the ERA
Progress Report 2013 provides a good initial analysis of the state-of-play of
the implementation of the ERA priorities in the Member States and at European
level. The report shows that much has already been achieved towards the
construction of ERA, and also gives a first indication of possible areas for
future action".

It also
"invited the Member States in close cooperation with the Commission,
considering the ERAC opinion and working through ERAC, to develop by mid-2015
an ERA roadmap at European level". Accordingly, it called on the Member
States "to take fully into account the ERA implementation when developing
national strategies. This may include the development of national ERA
initiatives".

In 2014 the
Commission will present the second ERA Progress Report, It will include a full
assessment of progress in the adoption of policies in support of ERA. It will
also present the implementation of ERA by research funders – the ones
translating national policies into concrete measures - and by research performing
organisations – the ones implementing the ERA actions in their daily work - in
the different countries.

The Joint
Programming process is one of the five ERA partnerships launched by the
Commission in 2008.[10]
A first assessment suggests that three Public-public partnerships can
contribute to increased growth and well-being in the EU:

The Joint
Programming Initiative (JPI) on Neurodegenerative diseases (JPND) gathers
25 Member States. It has much increased the coordination of ERA research
and contributed to increasing fourfold investment in the area between 2007
and 2011. Its Joint Call on Biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease is one of
the biggest in the world. The JPI has attracted Canada as a full partner
and the US National Institutes of Health (US-NIH) is negotiating possible
collaborations.
The Commission
proposed to invest €600 M in a Joint Programme with 37 EU Member States
and Associated Countries through the Art.185 initiative on Metrology.[11]
According to the ex-ante Impact Assessment, the first Art.185 initiative
(2007-2013) has contributed to increasing coordination on metrology
research in the ERA, delivering equal quality to US NIST activities, for a
fourth of the investment.
All countries
in the ERA undertake research on rare diseases, as private business would
not invest in diseases affecting each less than 0.05% of Europeans.
However, together, the more than 6,000 diseases affect directly some 25 million
Europeans.[12]
No country can deal with such diseases alone. The ERA-NET scheme and the
International Rare Diseases Research Consortium (IRDiRC)[13] have
increased coordination of research not only in Europe, but in the whole
world, contributing to the fact that available therapies on rare diseases
were multiplied tenfold, from 14 in 2010, to more than 100 in 2014.[14]
Commitment
4.1 - Comparable research careers structures

The 2011
communication ‘Towards a European Framework for Research Careers’ set the basis
for the creation of a framework that allows better comparability for research
careers structures. The European Framework for Research Careers (EFRC)
identifies both necessary and desirable characteristics, which could be
applicable across a wide range of careers, including those in higher education,
the private and public sectors. The Framework is intended to foster
cross-border and cross-sector researcher mobility, helping researchers to
identify job offers and employers to find suitable candidates.

The Framework
consists of four profiles:

-
R1 - First Stage Researcher   (up to the point
of PhD)

-
R2 - Recognised Researcher (PhD holders or
equivalent who are not yet fully independent)

-
R3 - Established Researcher  (researchers who
have developed a level of independence)

-
R4 - Leading Researcher       (researchers
leading their research area or field)

Consensus among
stakeholders on the Framework was reached in 2011 and the report was adopted by
the ERA Steering Group on Human Resources and Mobility. The Framework was
firstly introduced - for self-categorisation purposes - on the EURAXESS Jobs
Portal and in 2012 the ERA Communication invited research stakeholder
organisations to advertise all vacancies on the EURAXESS Jobs portal using the
common profiles established in the Framework.

In 2013 most
universities, other research organisations, funders and companies refer to the
EFRC in their recruitment, human resources management, training and all the
EURAXESS Jobs and national portals use the framework and its descriptors for
their job categorisation. Also EU programmes (Framework Programme, Erasmus,
Erasmus Mundus) use the framework and its descriptors for their grant schemes.

Commitment
4.2 - Innovative Doctoral training

In 2011, a set
of Principles for Innovative Doctoral training were defined with the help of
experts from university associations, industry and funding organisations. They
reflect the Salzburg Principles of the EUA, good practice in Member States and
the Marie Curie experience. The Principles were adopted by the ERA Steering
Group on Human Resources and Mobility and endorsed in the November 2011 Council
conclusions on the Modernisation of Higher education.

The principles
refer to: 1) Research Excellence, 2) Attractive Institutional Environment (in
line with the Charter & Code), 3) Interdisciplinary Research Options, 4)
Exposure to industry and other relevant employment sectors, 5) International
networking, 6) Transferable skills training, 7) Quality Assurance.

The 2012 ERA
Communication invited research stakeholders to "provide structured
doctoral training based on the Principles for Innovative Doctoral
Training" and "develop and implement structured programmes to
increase mobility between industry and academia".

Their wider
uptake has been explored through a study on the Implementation of the
principles in 2013 (with on-site visits to 20 universities in 16 countries
during 2013) and Marie Curie Action grant support. The aim was to verify the
feasibility of the principles against current institutional practice and the
emerging needs of the Innovation Union and to propose a set of recommendations
to promote the implementation of the principles on a Europe wide scale.  According
to the results of the study, the principles are well-accepted and subscribed to
by all target groups at institutional, doctoral, policy and non-academic levels
and are considered as a ‘guiding tool’. Research excellence seems to be the
‘leading’ principle, based on quality assurance and attractiveness of the
research/institutional environment.

Half of the
Marie Skłodowska-Curie funding in Horizon 2020 will be dedicated to
innovative doctoral training, including industrial and joint doctorates. Marie
Skłodowska-Curie actions (MSCA) will combine research excellence with training on
entrepreneurial skills and encourage doctoral candidates to engage with
industry and other employers during their fellowship, thus reducing cultural
and other barriers to mobility and inter-sector collaboration

A Working Group
has been created by the ERA Steering Group on Human Resources and Mobility to
look at practical ways to widen the uptake of the principles across Europe.

MSCA-backed researchers in team behind Higgs boson 'God particle'
discovery

Six researchers associated to the Marie Skłodowska-Curie
Initial Training Network (ITN) ACEOLE were directly involved in the
revolutionary sub-atomic particle discovery of the Higgs Boson by the CERN, the
European nuclear research facility. The discovery stands out as one of the
great scientific achievements of the 21st Century so far.

The six fellows involved helped to develop the data readout systems
used at the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator tunnel at CERN.

Researchers from another ITN, 'TALENT', provided operational support
for the experiment. This other network, created in 2012, is developing
measurement tools for a better understanding of the precise nature of the new
particle.

Commitment
4.3 – Creation of a Pan-European Pension Fund for Researchers

International
mobility of researchers contributes to excellence. However, some administrative
settings discourage such mobility. For instance, mobile researchers risk losing
their supplementary pension benefits. In fact, approximately 12% or 154,000
researchers from higher education institutions risk losing their pension
entitlements when moving to another country.[15]

Building on
earlier preparatory work, the Commission committed in 2012 to support
stakeholders in setting up pan-European supplementary pension fund(s) for researchers.
The purpose of the project is to ensure adequate and sustainable occupational
pensions for mobile and non-mobile researchers in the European Economic Area.

A Task Force was
created in 2013 to prepare a proposal on the establishment of a pan-European
Retirement Savings Vehicle (RSV) for professionals employed by research
organisations. In early 2014 the Task Force transformed into a consortium of
committed employers. The purpose of the consortium is to promote the
establishment of the Institution for Occupational Retirement Provision (IORP)
that will manage occupational pension plan(s) for the benefit of researchers
(and their beneficiaries) of the sponsoring undertakings (universities and/or
research institutions) within the EEA. The consortium will represent sponsoring
undertakings in the governance structure of the IORP and promote
insurance-based or other forms of occupational retirement provision for
researchers in the EU to supplement the IORP.

In addition to
the seminars to raise awareness, the European Commission has foreseen €1.8 million
under Horizon 2020 to sponsor the set-up of notably the IORP and the insurance
scheme as well as the functional administration, including the selection of
provider(s). The fund should become operational by the beginning of 2015, with
defined pension contributions being transferred to the fund in early 2015.

Commitment 5: Construct the
priority European research infrastructures

"By 2015, Member States together with the Commission should
have completed or launched the construction of 60% of the priority European
research infrastructures currently identified by the European Strategy Forum
for Research Infrastructures (ESFRI). The potential for innovation of these
(and ICT and other) infrastructures should be increased. The Member States are
invited to review their Operational Programmes to facilitate the use of
cohesion policy money for this purpose."

ESFRI, the
European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures, is a strategic instrument whose mission is to support a coherent and
strategy-led approach to policy-making on research infrastructures in Europe, and to facilitate multilateral initiatives leading to the better use and
development of research infrastructures, at EU and international level. This
strategy aims to overcome the barriers stemming from the fragmentation of national
R&I policies and provides Europe with the most up-to-date Research
Infrastructures, responding to the rapidly evolving science frontiers, promoting
knowledge-based technologies and their extended use.

ESFRI issued a
new Roadmap in 2010 highlighting priorities for research infrastructures for
the following 10 years. The seventh Framework Programme for Research
(2007-2013) has supported all ESFRI projects on the 2010 ESFRI Roadmap in order
to carry out their Preparatory Phase towards actual construction and operation.
The 2010 ESFRI Roadmap comprises forty-eight ESFRI research infrastructures,
which cover a broad spectrum of scientific fields and includes also two
projects from CERN’s European Strategy for Particle Physics. Projects in the
2010 ESFRI Roadmap span social sciences and humanities (5), environmental
sciences (9), energy (7), biological and medical sciences (13), materials and
analytical facilities (6), physical sciences and engineering (7) and
e-infrastructures (1). They are of different sizes and scope. These include the
upgrading and/or the creation of 14 new large-scale single sited expensive
facilities and 36 distributed RI, which in many cases will offer new European
services and facilitate access of researchers to scientific resources, data,
information and material in various scientific domains.

The ESFRI
Implementation Group (IG) published in 2012 its first report on the state of
the implementation of the projects on the ESFRI Roadmap 2010. The results of
the IG report show that the projects are making good progress towards achieving
the Innovation Union Commitment. The report identified a total of 27 projects
that were "under implementation" making, thus, up to 56% of the 48
ESFRI projects. According to the IG report, the most frequently cited
bottleneck for ESFRI RI was, however, the development of a suitable funding
model, which would be at the same time sustainable, equitable and realistic.
Securing the necessary funding from Member States and Associated Countries is
exacerbated by the current economic crisis. Eighteen national roadmaps are
already published.[16] 
The focus of the current process is more on making decisions and securing long
term commitments to the construction. However, according to conservative
estimates, 14 ESFRI projects currently provide services to users.

An experts
workshop was held in 2011 to assess the potential of RI for industrial
innovation. Such workshop provided recommendations to enhance the role of RI in
Horizon 2020.

The European
Commission, together with ESFRI, established a High Level Expert (AEG) in 2012
in order to make a more detailed assessment of the financial and managerial
maturity of the ESFRI projects towards implementation.  Published in 2013, the
AEG report[17]
shows that most of the ESFRI projects need substantial support and guidance
both in terms of managerial and financial security but also regarding
stakeholder engagement, project management, user strategy and risk evaluation.

The European
Commission published the first Horizon 2020 calls for research infrastructures
and has secured exceptional financial support for this ESFRI shortlist of
projects. This one-time EU financial contribution under Horizon 2020 will only
be made available once the Member States’ commitment to those projects is
confirmed.

Progress has
been made in the adoption of Member States' and Associated Countries' national
roadmaps which underpin national decisions for the participation to ESFRI
projects. Long term investment and commitments of the Member States and Associated Countries to the implementation process is crucial.

In 2014, Commission
services will issue a guide setting out cost-benefit analysis of major
projects, including research infrastructure. Since 2007 JASPERS, a joint
technical assistance facility for major projects run by the EIB with Commission
co-funding, provided support for the preparation and implementation of research
infrastructures, including 14 major projects with a total cost of over EUR 2
billion. Also the Commission encourages the inclusion of support for the ESFRI
roadmap in national and regional programmes and smart specialisation strategies
(as recommended by the 2012 ERA Communication). This reflects the requirement
in the ex-ante conditionality relating to research and innovation
infrastructures and capacities to adopt an indicative multi-annual plan for
budgeting and prioritisation of investments linked to EU priorities, and, where
appropriate, ESFRI.

Commitment 6: Simplify and focus
the future EU R&I programmes on Innovation Union

"Future EU research and innovation programmes will focus on
Europe 2020 objectives and particularly the Innovation Union. In 2011, looking
ahead to the next financial perspectives, the Commission will set out ways for
future programmes to focus more on societal challenges, streamline funding
instruments and radically simplify access through a better balance between a
control-based and a trust-based system. The role of the ERC in promoting
excellence should be strengthened and industry driven priorities reinforced
(including industry driven partnerships in areas such as key enabling
technologies) in the research Framework Programme."

Horizon 2020,
the new EU programme for research and innovation running from 2014-2020, was
proposed by the European Commission in November 2011 and adopted by the
European Parliament and the Council in December 2013. The first work-programme
(covering 2014-2015) was adopted by the Commission in December 2013 and agreed
by the Member States and EEA EFTA countries in February 2014.

With a budget of
nearly €80 billion over seven years, Horizon 2020 is the biggest EU research
programme yet, and one of the biggest publicly funded worldwide. It is a
totally new type of research and innovation programme for the EU that has been
designed to deliver results that make a difference to people's lives. Built on
three pillars – Excellent Science, Industrial Leadership and Societal
Challenges - it will fund all types of activities, from frontier science to
close-to-market innovation.

Horizon 2020
focuses on Europe 2020 and the Innovation Union in particular, by bringing
together all existing EU research and innovation funding, providing support in
a seamless way from idea to market, through streamlined funding instruments and
simpler programme architecture and rules for participation.

Some key
elements of Horizon 2020 are:

·
A challenge-based approach to key issues facing
societies, such as healthcare, sustainable agriculture, smarter and greener
transport, and climate change;

·
Investment in Key Enabling Technologies such as
photonics, nanotechnologies and biotechnology;

·
A dedicated SME Instrument and a 'Fast Track to
Innovation' pilot scheme to speed up the time from idea to market, and to
increase the participation of industry, SMEs and first time applicants (see
commitment 7);

·
Innovative public-private partnerships in areas
such as new medicines, greener aircraft technologies and electronics;

·
A reinforced European Institute of Innovation and Technology (see commitment 9);

·
Increased funding for the European Research
Council, already one of the world's premier frontier-research funding agencies;

·
Strengthened Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions,
providing grants for research fellowships (see commitments 1 and 4);

·
A renewed focus on widening participation in
less well-performing EU countries, including better synergies with European Structural
and Investment Funds;

·
A reinforced cooperation between science and
society, pairing scientific excellence with social awareness and
responsibility, increasing the attractiveness of science careers and promoting
gender equality in research and innovation.

The programme
for the first time brings all EU-level funding for research and innovation
under one roof, provides a single set of rules and will radically slash red
tape. The overarching goal is a more coherent, simpler programme that will make
it easier to participate, especially for smaller research organisations and
small businesses. Key elements include: a simpler programme architecture which
makes it easier for participants to identify where funding opportunities exist;
a single set of participation rules applying to all funding provided;
electronic signature of grants and amendments; simpler funding rules, with
overall two standard funding rates; a reduced burden of financial controls and
audits, due partly to the use of flat rates for indirect costs, a major source
of error in the past.

Commitment 7: Ensure stronger
involvement of SMEs in future EU R&I programmes

"The Commission will design future EU research and innovation
programmes to ensure simple access and stronger involvement of SMEs, in
particular those with a high growth potential. Further use should be made of
partnerships with Member State agencies, building in particular on the
experience of the Eureka Eurostars initiative."

The Horizon 2020
programme includes an integrated approach to SMEs.

SMEs are encouraged
to participate across the whole Horizon 2020 programme. They can engage in
collaborative projects as part of a consortium, and are supported through a
new, dedicated SME Instrument[18] specially designed for highly innovative SMEs that want to develop,
grow and internationalise, regardless of whether they are high-tech and
research-driven or non-research conducting, social or service companies. The
integrated approach, together with simplification efforts, are anticipated to
lead to a minimum of 20% (some €8.65 billion) flowing to SMEs from the total
combined budgets of the specific objective 'Leadership in enabling and
industrial technologies' and the 'Societal Challenges' over the 2014-2020
duration of Horizon 2020. Furthermore, at least one-third of the €2.842 billion
budget of the debt and equity facilities of the 'Access to Risk Finance' part
of Horizon 2020 is expected to be absorbed by SMEs.

The SME
Instrument will be crucial in achieving this target, as at least €3 billion
will be channelled through it. The Instrument aims to fill gaps in funding for
early-stage, high-risk research and innovation by SMEs, as well as stimulating
breakthrough innovation. It provides easy access for small firms, with simple
rules and procedures, and is designed to encourage individual SMEs (as
potential mono-beneficiaries) to put forward their most innovative ideas. The
permanently open call launched in March 2014 offers business innovation grants
- a lump sum of €50,000[19] - for feasibility assessment purposes; business innovation grants
of €500,000 to €2.5 million[20] for innovation development and demonstration; free-of-charge
business coaching, to support and enhance a firm’s innovation capacity and help
align the project with the company's strategic business needs; a wide range of
innovation support services; and facilitated access to risk finance to foster
the commercial take-up of the innovation.

The Eurostars 2
Joint Programme, undertaken by several Member States and Associated Countries
in the framework of Eureka, with the participation of the EU, promotes
market-oriented transnational activities of research-intensive SMEs in any
field. By pooling together national resources, Eurostars 2 also aims at
strengthening the integration of national research programmes contributing to
the achievement of the European Research Area. The Joint Programme was proposed
as part of the Innovation Investment Package in July 2013 and
interinstitutional negotiations were successfully completed in February 2014.

Commitment 8: Strengthen the
science base for policy making through JRC and create EFFLA

"The Commission will strengthen its science base for policy
making through its Joint Research Centre. The Commission will also create a
"European Forum on Forward Looking Activities" bringing together
existing studies and data and involving public and private stakeholders to
improve the evidence base of policies."

Over the past
years, the Joint Research Centre (JRC) has taken a number of initiatives to
strengthen connections between its science and the Commission's policy agenda
and meet the goal of becoming a major player in transforming science into
policy advice. The new JRC Work Programme for 2014-15 identifies how the JRC's
science supports different EU policies. In cooperation with Policy Directorates
General in the Commission, the JRC aims to ensure that its scientific output is
focused on the Commission's policy priorities.

The JRC is also
raising the profile of science in policy debates through high level events
bringing together top scientists and EU policymakers on key political issues.

Moreover, the
JRC has reinforced its participation in the internal Commission impact
assessment process for new policy initiatives and has revived its work on
foresight, to help science inform strategy setting. It is carrying out
foresight studies with the aim of contributing to the EU Policy cycle. So far,
it has completed one foresight study on the Future of Standards and Standardisation.
A JRC foresight study on Food and Health is also nearing completion. Two
further studies on the Future of Eco-Industries and Global Food Security will
be completed by June 2014.

The European
Forum on Forward Looking activities (EFFLA) was established in 2011. It
delivered 17 policy briefs[21]
on issues ranging from institutionalising foresight in Research and Innovation
policy to societal challenge addressed by Horizon 2020.

EFFLA has also
made recommendations for developing a foresight culture in the Commission, as
well as for sense-making, foresight standards and cooperation with Member
States. In addition, EFFLA has given advice on the societal challenges in
Horizon 2020.

By advising the
Commission on how to make foresight an integral part of the strategic
programming cycle, EFFLA gave the Commission the capacity to better manage
uncertainty and to address threats, to seize opportunities and to become a
better user of foresight.

EFFLA played a
key role in the establishment of a 'foresight hub' – a dedicated foresight team
within the Commission.  This hub's role is to coordinate foresight across
Horizon 2020 and to draw on foresight from Member States and elsewhere to
inform strategic programming. A network of 'foresight correspondents' has been set
up, in order to enable the existing foresight knowledge and in Horizon 2020
projects to be used more efficiently and effectively.

Commitment 9: Set out an EIT
Strategic Innovation Agenda

"By mid-2011, the EIT should set out a Strategic Innovation Agenda
(SIA) to expand its activities as a showcase for Innovation in Europe. This should map out its long-term development within the Innovation Union,
including the creation of new Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs),
close links with the private sector and a stronger role in entrepreneurship. It
should also build on the EIT Foundation set up in 2010 and on the introduction
in 2011 of the "EIT degree" as an internationally recognized label of
excellence."

The European
Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) brings together the three strands
of the knowledge triangle of higher education, research and innovation in new
types of partnership – Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs).

The Strategic
Innovation Agenda (SIA) of the EIT was presented in 2011. It outlines the
consolidation and further development of the three existing KICs - on climate
change (Climate-KIC), sustainable energy (KIC InnoEnergy) and the future
information and communication society (EIT ICT Labs) - and the creation of five
new ones in the areas of innovation for healthy living and active ageing, food
for future, raw materials, added value manufacturing, and urban mobility. The
proposal further includes measures enhancing EIT's impact and ensuring KICs'
expertise and lessons learned are shared across Europe. Based on the SIA, the call for KICs in the areas of ‘Innovation for
Healthy Living and Active Ageing’ and ‘Raw Materials’ was launched in February
2014.

The criteria for
awarding an EIT label for KICs Masters courses and PhD programmes were defined
in 2012. By the end of 2012, more than 35 Masters courses have obtained the EIT
label and more than 1,000 students have enrolled in EIT education programmes.
As result of the education, innovation, business support and entrepreneurship
activities, more than 100 start-ups have been created to date, more than 400
business ideas have been incubated and around 90 new products, services and
processes have been launched.

By 2020 the EIT
is expected to train 10,000 Master students and 10,000 PhDs, create 600 new
companies, and achieve systemic impact in the way universities, research
centres and companies cooperate for innovation. The EIT will strongly
contribute to the objectives set out in Horizon 2020, in particular by
addressing societal challenges in a complementary way to other initiatives.

EIT ICT Labs Master School

In 2014 the first Master students from the two year programme in ICT
Innovation will graduate from the 21 participating top European universities.
Their career options look bright as the evaluations from faculty, industry and
the students themselves show that the combination of a technical major in the
field of ICT and a minor in Innovation and Entrepreneurship truly boosts these
skills.

The students are immerged in to the innovation areas of EIT ICT Labs
through summer schools and winter camps connecting them to the ecosystem of
researchers and industry in the field. This has proved to be very inspirational
and a number of commercial ideas, projects and start-ups have formed. At the
summer school on Health and Wellbeing in 2013 the students pitched ICT Business
solutions for Philips by the end of the two week course.

“The students did very well. In general terms the quality of the
solutions was quite good and some of them are nice input to our business cases.
The enthusiasm and eagerness to crunch the cases were tremendous. The solutions
were really refreshing in some cases and the final pitches showed that the
students integrated the information they got in between. Fast learners! Very
promising high potentials”, said Lisette Appelo, Director Human Capital of
Philips.

By each year the activities of the EIT ICT Labs is scaling up by
100% so in autumn 2014 nearly 400 students will be welcomed and almost 100 will
continue with further studies, as intrapreneurs in large companies or
developing their own business creations.

The Foundation of the EIT (EITF) is an independent organisation
dedicated to promoting a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship in Europe. It aims to enlarge the impact of the EIT via the promotion of entrepreneurial
education, the creation of a new generation of young people with an
entrepreneurial mind-set, and the development of an international network of
talented professionals. The EIT Foundation gathers ten prominent companies
actively involved in the implementation of the EIT Foundation’s work programme.

In 2013, the
EITF has started implementing its work programme via the launch of the Young
Leaders Programme - an entrepreneurial and leadership training programme
gathering young professionals, entrepreneurs and students from all over Europe
to ponder over EU's innovation challenges and propose recommendations to
overcome them to key innovation leaders. The Young Leaders group presented their
conclusions and recommendations to a high-level audience in the Foundation's
Annual Innovation Forum organised on the topic of data-driven innovation in
March 2013. A new edition of the Young Leaders
Programme on the topic of Future Learning Environments was launched in March
2014.

The Foundation
of the EIT has also launched a European internship programme. The programme
targets EU's talented people and aims at equipping them with the competences
needed to work in highly entrepreneurial and innovative frameworks. The
programme will contribute to bridging current skills and innovation gaps across
countries, sectors or disciplines and help tackling youth unemployment
challenges.

In the coming
years the implementation of the SIA actions will be completed and the EIT
Foundation will be consolidated. As indicated in the SIA, the EIT is expected
to enhance and widen its impact across the innovation community in the next
seven year period.

Getting good
ideas to market        
1.
Key messages

The business
environment in Europe is becoming more innovation-friendly due to measures that
favour the faster flow of ideas to market.

Better instruments
to access finance, including reinforced debt and equity facilities and the
venture capital passport, are in place and are about to start delivering.
Clearer rules for state aid will start applying in the second half of 2014,
leading to the possibility for Member States to design better economic
incentives for innovation.

The basis for
the development of a more efficient knowledge system that protects intellectual
property and investments in knowledge while providing the conditions for open
collaboration and knowledge sharing are in place. This concerns in particular
the Unitary Patent, the exploration of knowledge markets for patents and
licences, and the transition from a the concept of knowledge transfer to a
system based on co-creation and open innovation.

Improved tools
to foster demand for innovation have been put in place, including more modern
standard setting, an operational methodology for regulatory screening, better
rules for public procurement of innovation and the eco-innovation action plan.

New
opportunities to innovate in the area of service innovation, building on a user-oriented
approach, were exploited through initiatives linked to design, such as the
European Design Leadership Board.

2.
Progress so far
Commitment 10 – Put in place EU
level financial instruments to attract private finance

"By 2014: on the basis of Commission proposals, the EU should
put in place financial instruments to attract a major increase in private
finance and close the market gaps in investing in growth and innovation.
Contributions from the EU budget should create a major leverage effect and
expand on the success of current programmes. The Commission will work with the
European Investment Bank Group, national financial intermediaries and private
investors to develop proposals addressing the following critical gaps:
investment in early stages of firm development, including knowledge transfer
and start-ups; venture capital for fast growing firms expanding on EU and
global markets; loans for innovative fast growing SMEs. The proposed
instruments will have a high leverage effect, an efficient management and a
simple access for businesses."

Horizon 2020
includes, for the first time in a framework programme, a specific section on
'Access to Risk Finance'. This covers a set of debt and equity financial
instrument facilities and a range of accompanying measures that scale up and
refine the debt financial instruments - the RSFF[22] and the RSI[23] - implemented under FP7, and the early-stage equity facility - GIF-1[24] - implemented under CIP. The facilities are designed to complement
the financial instruments of COSME.[25] The first work-programme (covering 2014-2015) was agreed by the Member States and EEA EFTA countries in February 2014.[26] The budget for 2014-2020 in current prices[27] is €2,842 million.

As in FP7, debt
and equity facilities will be run in a demand-driven manner, though the
priorities of particular sectors or of other EU programmes will be targeted if
top-up funding is made available, including from managing authorities wishing
to invest part of their European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF)
programme contribution. The focus remains on attracting private investments
into R&I. As before, firms and other entities located in the EU or in
non-EU countries associated to Horizon 2020 are eligible as beneficiaries
unless otherwise specified.

On the debt
side, the products offered cover loans for R&I-driven SMEs and small
midcaps,[28]
loans, plus hybrid and mezzanine finance, for R&I-driven (or R&I
undertaken by) medium and large midcaps, as well as loans for R&I
undertaken by large firms, universities and other public research
organisations, R&I infrastructures, public-private partnerships, and
special-purpose vehicles or projects.

The equity
facilities offer early-stage venture capital (VC) and quasi-equity for SMEs and
small midcaps, plus a degree of potential investment in the growth stage, as
well as equity and other forms of risk capital for the early stages, such as
business angels investment, or technology transfer activities.

The European
Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Investment Fund (EIF) will play an
important role, as entrusted entities, in implementing each financial
instrument facility on behalf of and in partnership with the European
Commission. For EIF, this role includes (as under FP7 and CIP) conducting calls
for expressions of interest for selecting the financial intermediaries, such as
banks and risk-capital funds, that will make the actual loans to, or
investments in, SMEs and small midcaps. While EIB will make large loans
directly, it will also be able to use financial intermediaries as well,
particularly when supporting medium and large midcaps. Exploratory talks with
other financial institutions of comparable stature are underway, and in future
one or more may join EIB and EIF in running facilities for the European
Commission. The first calls
for expressions of interest by financial intermediaries are likely to take
place in the third quarter of 2014, assuming that negotiations with EIB and EIF
are successfully concluded by the end of the second quarter.

Commitment 11 – Ensure
cross-border operation of venture capital funds

"By the end of 2011, the Commission will present a proposal for
a new legislative regime to ensure that Venture Capital funds established in
any Member State can function and invest freely in the EU."

Access to
finance is essential to enhance the competiveness and growth potential of SMEs.
For this reason the European Commission is presenting a strategy to promote
better access to finance for SMEs which includes a proposal for a regulation
setting uniform rules for the marketing of venture capital funds.

The European
Venture Capital Regulation (EuVECA) entered into force in July 2013. The new
regulation makes it easier for venture capitalists to raise funds across Europe for the benefit of start-ups. The approach is simple: once a set of requirements is
met, all qualifying fund managers can raise capital under the designation 'European
Venture Capital Fund' across the EU. They will therefore no longer need to meet
requirements which are different in every Member State. By introducing a single
rulebook, venture capital funds will have the potential to attract more capital
commitments and become bigger.

There is
considerable interest by smaller operators to establish themselves as EuVECA
managers. This is not surprising as the EuVECA rules explicitly limit eligible
managers to firms that operate beneath the Alternative Investment Fund Managers
Directive (AIFMD)[29]
thresholds.

At present, three
requests for a cross-border marketing passport have been filed with the
competent national authorities, two in the UK and one in Slovakia. The latter was unfortunately withdrawn due to the cost of obtaining a
registration.  Indeed, as predicted in the pre-legislative impact assessment,
the main obstacle to a rapid roll-out of EuVECA funds is the national
registration process. In the post-crisis environment, national regulators are
extremely cautious in registering smaller operators who find it more difficult
than their larger peers to comply with a variety of post-crisis requirements,
such as the separation of portfolio management and risk management functions or
the independent valuation of investment assets.

More work needs
to be conducted within the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA)[30] in order to entice
national regulators to adopt a more flexible attitude in authorising EuVECA
managers. Alternatively, the option of opening EUVECA funds to managers
authorised under the AIFMD could be explored. The deployment of impact of this
commitment will require striking a delicate balance between post crisis
requirements on prudential oversight and the need to stimulate investment in Europe's real economy.

Commitment 12 – Strengthen cross-border
matching of innovative firms with investors

"The Commission will strengthen cross-border matching of
innovative firms with suitable investors. It will appoint a leading figure to
lead the process. In addition, in the context of the SME Finance Forum, the
Commission will focus inter alia on the particular financing problems faced by
small, innovative companies."

In order to
identify current trends and best practices in the area of matching innovative
firms with investors on a cross-border basis and formulate policy
recommendations, a European expert group was set up by the European Commission.
The expert group was chaired by Anthony Clarke, Chairman of the British
Business Angel Association and delivered recommendations to be considered both
at the EU and at Member States level.

The expert group
also made recommendations with regards to how R&D grants should be set up
and recommended the creation of a business angels facility and of rules that
would favour cooperation among business angels and venture capitalists. Recommendations
concerning R&D grants were taken into account in the design of the new
SME instrument (see commitment 7). To follow up on the recommendation
concerning business angels, a study was included in the Horizon 2020 work
programme for 2014-2015 which should deliver a more comprehensive picture of
the potential for angel and crowd-funding investors to improve access to risk
finance in the EU for, in particular, SMEs and small midcaps. In addition a
pilot of a business angels facility focussing on ICT will be launched in 2015.

The Startup
Europe initiative,[31]
together with other matchmaking projects, have been launched in 2013 and 2014
to support accelerating programmes, coaching and mentoring of Web and ICT
entrepreneurs, developing their investment readiness and facilitating
interactions with investors across Europe.

Several meetings
of the SME Finance Forum bringing together SMEs, banks and other financial
institutions were organised from 2012 to 2014 to monitor the market situation
and explore new ideas to improve access to finance for SME, including small,
innovative companies.

The Commission is
considering the recommendations made with regard to venture capital in the
implementation details for the central financial instruments under Horizon 2020
and COSME.

Also, as a
follow-up to the recommendations, the Enterprise Europe Network will provide
more extensive advice and assistance to SMEs on accessing finance, and will
cooperate closely with other local service providers such as financial
intermediaries and accountants.

Commitment 13 – Review State Aid Framework
for R&D&I

"In 2011 the Commission will conduct a mid-term review of the
State aid Framework on research, development and innovation clarifying which
forms of innovation can be properly supported, including for key enabling
technologies and innovations addressing major societal challenges, and their
best use by Member States. The Commission will assess the effectiveness of the
temporary State aid measures introduced in 2008, including the increased
"safe harbour" for venture capital investments, and on this basis
make the necessary proposals."

The Mid-Term
Review of the Community framework for State Aid for research and development
and innovation was finalised in 2011.[32]
 Its objective was to start reflecting on the contribution of the R&D&I
State Aid rules to the EU innovation goals in order to further promote private
investment in R&D, smarter public investment and overall innovation.

The Mid-Term
Review concluded that the current R&D&I Framework constitutes a useful
instrument for well-targeted public support although all its possibilities have
not been utilised by Member States to their full extent.

In parallel, a
broader reflection was launched on the future R&D&I State aid policy,
including on wider and more substantive issues such as aid effectiveness,
architecture, and proportionality of the rules. To this effect a public
consultation in the form of a questionnaire was opened to Member States and stakeholders between 2011 and 2012.

The European
Commission then launched in 2012 the State Aid Modernisation (SAM), an
ambitious reform package of State Aid policy with three key objectives: to
foster growth in a strengthened, dynamic and competitive internal market, in
line with the objectives of the Europe 2020 growth strategy; to focus
enforcement on cases with the biggest impact on internal market; to streamline
rules and ensure faster decisions.

The
implementation of SAM is now well advanced. In particular, in 2013 the Council
has adopted the revised Enabling regulation, which introduces new categories of
aid that the Commission may decide to exempt from the obligation of prior
notification, including innovation aid.

The Commission
has also already adopted a number of revised rules, including new Risk Finance
guidelines, which aim at ensuring that, in case of market failures, SMEs and
small and innovative mid-caps have proper access to finance in order to bring
new products and ideas to the market.

The new SAM rules
are expected to be in place, ready to be used by Member States from the 1 July
2014. The new General Block Exemption Regulation (GBER) is expected to be
significantly extended and, in particular, it should increase the notification
thresholds for R&D projects and include new exempted categories such as
innovation aid and aid for research infrastructure. The new GBER should
therefore ensure that a large majority of research, development and innovation
(R&D&I) aid should be granted without need for notification to the
Commission. The newly revised R&D&I framework is also expected to
improve clarity and establish greater legal certainty about the forms of
support for investments in R&D&I which are compatible with EU State aid
rules or lie outside the scope of the rules altogether.  The Risk Finance
Guidelines are better taking into account the needs of both innovative SMEs and
Midcaps. Finally, the current Community Framework for State aid for
R&D&I deals with compatibility of aid under Article 107(3)(b) of the
Treaty, concerning aid to an important project of common European interest
(IPCEI).  In the revised guidelines and SAM rules, this guidance is expected to
be elaborated and published in a new separate stand-alone Communication
covering IPCEI.

Commitment 14 – Deliver the EU
Patent

"The European Parliament and Council should take the necessary
steps to adopt the proposals on the EU patent (at present European patent with
unitary effect or unitary patent), its linguistic regime and the unified system
of dispute settlement."

The 'Unitary
patent package' was agreed between 2012 and 2013. It includes a Regulation
creating a Unitary Patent (UP) and a Regulation establishing a translation
regime applicable to the UP, as well as an international agreement among Member
States setting up a single and specialised patent jurisdiction (the Unified Patent Court, UPC). The patent package implements enhanced
cooperation between 25 Member States (all Member States except Italy, Spain and Croatia; the latter has expressed its willingness to join the enhanced
cooperation).

The UP
regulations entered into force on 20 January 2013. However, they will only
apply from the date of entry into force of the UPC Agreement, which requires a
minimum of 13 ratifications, including ratifications by France, Germany and the UK. So far the UPC agreement has been ratified by Austria and France. The first UP providing uniform protection within the territory of the participating
25 Member States is expected to be granted in the course of 2015. [33]

The patent with unitary effect is going to be optional for European patent
holders wishing to protect their invention in the territory of 25 Member States
in a one-stop-shop.  Costs and administrative burden will be reduced since the
UP will be granted centrally by the EPO with minimum translation requirements
and no necessity to validate a granted patent on a national level.

The costs of a
Unitary patent for 25 Member States, covering procedural fees, i.e. on-line
filing, search, examination and grant of a patent, and translations are
expected to be remarkably reduced, leading to an estimated 85% of cost savings
for users of the unitary patent protection.[34]
Nevertheless, the real costs of the Unitary patent depend on the implementation
of the patent, the details of which are currently being defined by the Select
Committee of the European Patents Office[35].

The Unified Patent Court is expected to start functioning in the course of 2015.
It will be a single and specialised jurisdiction with competence for the future
UP and the “classical” European patents avoiding unnecessary duplication of
litigation cases before the national courts of several Member States. The
savings from having access to a Unified Patent Court would be between 148 to €289
million[36]
per year.  Cases in the UPC will be heard by highly experienced legally and
technically qualified judges sitting in multinational panels and applying
common procedural rules. The result will be development of a coherent and
consistent case-law, thereby increasing legal certainty and predictability.

Since 2013
machine translations of patent applications and granted patents are available
online and free of charge from and into English, French and German for 21 EU
official languages (Patent Translate).[37]

Technical
implementation of the UP regulations is carried out by the Select Committee,
established in March 2013 within the structure of European Patent Organisation
(EPO) by the participating Member States. The Commission is an observer in this
Committee. As a result of the work of the Select Committee, the Implementing
rules for the UP will be finalised by June 2014, the discussion on the
financial aspects of the UP as well as the discussion on the modalities of the
compensation scheme for translation costs are ongoing.

In order for the
UPC to become operational as soon as possible after the entry into force of the
UPC Agreement, in February 2013 the signatory Member States created a
Preparatory Committee in charge of the setting up of the UPC. The Commission is
an observer in this Committee. The objective is to prepare the UPC to be fully
operational in 2015.

Commitment 15 – Screen the
regulatory framework in key areas

"Starting in 2011 EU and Member States should undertake a
screening of the regulatory framework in key areas, starting with those linked
to eco-innovation and to the European Innovation Partnerships. This will
identify the rules that need to be improved or updated and/or new rules that
need to be implemented in order to provide sufficient and continuous incentives
to drive innovation. The Commission will provide guidance on how best to
organise this screening exercise."

The regulatory
environment is an important factor influencing the innovation activities of
companies and the wider economic system within which they operate. Regulations
can both foster or hamper innovation depending on how they are designed and
implemented. For example, rules that are too prescriptive can in some cases not
leave space for innovations but ambitious standards can work as an innovation
driver.

In order to
provide guidance on how best to organise the screening exercise, the Commission
had the responsibility to develop a methodology that allows to assess the
effect of the regulatory frameworks on innovation.. The aim is to identify the
rules that need to be improved or updated and/or new rules that need to be
implemented in order for regulation to foster innovation in those areas.

The methodology
allows any policy maker who is interested in re-thinking regulatory set-ups to
better foster innovation to analyse the innovation-regulation interaction
through a six step approach. This methodology has been applied to the 'Water'
and 'Raw Materials' European Innovation Partnerships (EIPs) (see commitment 29).
This allowed to identify the innovation effects of concrete regulations, as
well as to test the tool. It is now ready to be applied to areas where a need
to address the impact of legislation on innovation has been identified.

The Water Framework Directive: stimulating innovation in Europe

The water framework directive (WFD, 2000) was found to have
stimulated innovation directly and indirectly through quality requirements for
water and stipulations on the use of best available technology. Infrastructure investments
were necessary to varying degrees in the EU-15 and the, then, accession
countries. Through the framework directive, the demand for water-related goods
and services was induced. Being a stringent and reliable regulation, it
signalled to European companies in the water sector a growing demand that was
met through the diffusion of innovative goods and spurred the demand for
innovative goods and services. The EU-internal demand for water goods was and
still is mainly supplied by a growing European industry. Existing EU
legislation, including several EU Directives are seen as important drivers as
they provide ‘room’ for innovation by imposing stricter standards which require
new technologies to meet them. Environmental regulations were found to be more
influential in promoting technological innovation in the water sector than
economic regulation.

Current waste legislation: more ambitious regulation is needed to
foster innovation

Current legislation constitutes a barrier to innovation in terms of
recycling and in view of fostering the use of secondary raw materials. Waste
legislation basically aims to divert waste disposal away from landfill – with
the effect that many countries have invested in incinerating technologies and
infrastructures creating large capacities at relatively low cost for disposing
of waste. This form is by far cheaper than recycling, which needs a thorough
sorting and dismantling of complex goods prior to recovering useful materials.
Recycling is also still too costly compared to buying new raw material. Since
the price of the competing technology and raw material respectively are too
cheap to pose a real driver towards recycling and the use of secondary raw
materials, much more demanding regulation, possibly in a package with fiscal
measures is needed to incentivise recycling, and to create demand and a new
market for secondary raw materials.

The methodology
and results were presented to the High-Level Group Meeting on Eco-innovation
and will inform the activities under Action 1 'Environmental policy and
regulation' of the Eco-innovation Action Plan (see commitment 18).

In the medium
term it is expected that the EIPs Water and Raw Materials will use the results
of the study to identify key innovation barriers in their respective fields of
action. Based on this exercise, it will be possible to undertake concrete
actions in order to ensure that legislation supports innovation.

In the
long-term, a similar impact is expected in other sectors. The methodology has
been developed with the objective of being flexible enough so that it can be
used in any policy area. It is ready to be taken up to screen regulatory
frameworks in other sectors and re-shape legislation to make it more innovation
friendly.

Commitment 16 – Speed up and
modernise standard-setting

"In early 2011, as a first step, the Commission will present a
Communication accompanied by a legislative proposal on standardisation, which
will inter alia cover the ICT sector, in order to speed up and modernise
standard-setting to enable interoperability and foster innovation in
fast-moving global markets. This will be combined with a multi-annual programme
to anticipate new standardisation needs and integration of standards into
R&D projects in the research Framework Programme. The Communication will
also examine options for ensuring in a longer term perspective that the
standardisation system is able to adapt to the quickly evolving environment and
to contribute to Europe’s strategic internal and external objectives (relating,
among others, to innovation and technological development), including through
the launch of an independent review."

A Communication
setting out a strategic vision for European standards was published in 2011 and
a Regulation implementing its legislative measures followed in 2012. Together
they set the basis for a European standardisation system that is fit to foster
innovation.

In this package,
the Commission requires faster standard-setting for innovative products and
services.

Since European
standards are used above all by businesses as a tool to facilitate the market
penetration of innovative goods and reducing production costs, standards must
keep pace with ever faster product development cycles. It is especially vital
that in areas where Europe is the driving innovation force in developing new
types of tradable goods, services and technologies – for instance in areas such
as electric vehicles, security, energy efficiency and smart grids – the
creation of the European standard is fast so as to assert it as an
international standard.

A
standardisation process that keeps pace with the rapid shortening of innovation
cycles can ensure that the European industry remains competitive in a fast
changing global landscape, maximising European companies’ first mover
advantage. The new Framework Partnership Agreements with the European
Standardisation Organisations includes Key Performance Indicators, one of which
is the 50% reduction of the standard development time by 2020.

Standardisation
needs are also being anticipated through multi-annual programmes. The annual
Union work programme for European standardisation together with the rolling
plan for ICT standardisation cover the standardisation deliverables that the
Commission intends to request from the European standardisation organisations
in the coming year and the specific policies they support. The multi-annual
programmes also refer to the research and innovation priorities concerning
standardisation which are embedded in Horizon 2020.

The
standardisation process is now quicker, lasting on average 2.5 years, compared
to 4 in 2010. The recent introduction of a more performance based co-funding of
the European standardisation organisations by the Commission is expected to
contribute even further to a faster standard-setting for innovative products
and services. An independent review was launched in January 2014 and will
deliver its results in autumn. Among other objectives, it will assess whether
the standardisation system is prepared to support innovation and technological
development in the long term.

Commitment 17 – Set aside
dedicated national procurement budgets for innovation; Set up a EU level
support mechanism and facilitate joint procurement.

"From 2011, Member States and regions should set aside
dedicated budgets for pre-commercial procurements and public procurements of
innovative products and services (including those defined by the Innovation
Partnerships). This should create procurement markets across the EU starting
from at least €10 billion a year for innovations that improve the efficiency
and quality of public services, while addressing the major societal challenges.
The aim should be to achieve innovative procurement markets equivalent to those
in the US. The Commission will provide guidance and set up a (financial)
support mechanism to help contracting authorities to implement these
procurements in a non-discriminatory and open manner, to pool demand, to draw
up common specifications, and to promote SME access. In addition, the
Commission will offer guidance on implementing joint procurements between
contracting entities under the current public procurement directives and use
the ongoing general evaluation of the current directives to examine the
opportunity to introduce additional rules to make cross border joint
procurements easier."

The Commission’s proposal that Member States and regions should set aside dedicated budgets for pre-commercial procurements and
public procurements of innovative solutions has not been taken up by the
Council. Nevertheless, an increasing number of Member
States now have some experience with public procurement as an instrument of
innovation policy. For instance:

·
Some Member States have introduced allocations
for innovation procurement. Spain, for instance, introduced a 3% quota for
innovation procurement in its procurement law of July 2011. Another example is France where the National Pact for Growth, Competitiveness and Employment requires that at
least 2% of the public order of the State, its operators and hospitals are made
​​with innovative companies.

·
In 2012, Italy assigned more than €300 million to
pre-commercial procurement. It will be deployed in Southern Italy with the
support of structural funds. Moreover, the higher risk related to these
purchases can be covered by a special risk-sharing facility established in
cooperation with the European Investment Bank (see commitment  10).

·
Cross-border collaboration is also developing. In 2012, the
Nordic Ministers of Industry launched a flagship project in health care to strengthen
the collaboration between Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland on innovation procurement.[38]

The Commission has provided financial support to
transnational cooperation to help
contracting authorities implement innovation procurements:

·
The FP7 and CIP programmes have provided
financial support to innovation procurement since 2009 where they invited
proposals to create networks of procurers to raise awareness, share knowledge
and debate common public service needs. In 2011 the support was extended to
offer co-financing for procurers to jointly implement innovation procurement (Pre-Commercial
Procurement (PCP) supported via FP7, Public Procurement of Innovation (PPI) supported
via CIP) to find common solutions to shared needs. In 2009-10, over €4 million
were spent on networking procurers. In 2011-12, FP7 and CIP supported
innovation procurement with €43 million. In 2013, FP7 and CIP calls allocated
nearly €100 million to innovation procurement. Efforts have also been financed
to develop guides to support public procurers of innovation in a number of
sectors (e.g. sustainable construction, and health), and a more general guide
has been developed as well: "Public Procurement of Innovation - Guidance
for public authorities".

Procuring innovative solutions
across borders to assist elderly people

Public procurers from five
countries - UK, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands - have launched
the first joint cross-border pre-commercial procurement call for tender in
March 2013, under the FP7 project SILVER. The goal is to develop new
robotics-based solutions for assisting elderly people with physical or cognitive disabilities. Such technological solutions, when
implemented in elderly care, will make it possible by 2020 to care for 10% more
people using the same number of carers. The PCP process will be executed in
three phases, ending in March 2016. The result will be 2-3 products to be
tested in all partnering countries.

In September 2013, the SILVER
consortium finished the assessment phase of the PCP call for tender. In total,
seven European SMEs/consortia have succeeded out of 33 tenderers submitted.
Phase 1 of the SILVER Pre-Commercial Procurement process was launched in
October. This phase is a feasibility study during which successful tenderers
are expected to verify the technical, economic and organisational
feasibility of their ideas. Phase 2 of SILVER started in April 2014, following
the evaluation of the Phase 1 results.

Proposals from successful
tenderers include, for example, an intelligent robot arm that provides support
at the moment the person is losing stability and fears falling or could
actually fall. It follows passively all of the user's movements and gets active
in the user’s unstable situations; the robotic arm then becomes a stiff
support.

Another example is a mobile
sensor platform that is able to navigate inside an apartment and monitor
clients in a non-invasive manner. The monitoring is used to provide 24/7 safety
and behavioural analysis. Also, the robot assistant can bring water and
medicine, carry food and other items around and find items such as a pair of
glasses.

In the CIP-funded PPI project STOPANDGO,
six Italian, English, Spanish and Dutch elderly care procurers will undertake
together a €17.2 million public procurement of innovative solutions to trigger
the market to deliver ICT based telecare services that enable to care for frail
elderly that suffer from multiple conditions at the same time such as heart
failure, diabetes, etc. Additional health sector organisations that also
participate in the project will help to develop PPI tender specifications
suitable for European wide deployment of the solutions.

·
In the first Work Programme (2014-15) under
Horizon 2020 the total WP budget in support of
innovation procurement is more than €120 million (excluding procurements
related to Galileo and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) evolution
under the Space section). The projects
will encourage public procurers to deploy more innovative solutions in the
areas of ICT, Health, Secure Societies,
Transport, Bio-economy, Energy and Climate action. These include topping-up of
call budgets for both PCPs and PPIs, as well as support to networks of public
procurers.

·
Under Space, specific public procurement actions
are funded for the developments for a Galileo Public Regulated Service. Also
for GNSS evolution, activities are conducted pre-dominantly through
procurement. Under Research Infrastructures, an additional €14 million of
support to PCP is foreseen in the field of scientific instrumentation. Furthermore,
there is PCP support under the GÉANT Framework Programme Agreement.[39]

The Commission proposed,
in December 2011, revisions of the EU Public Procurement Directives that should facilitate procurement of innovative products and
services and cross-border joint procurement. The revised Directives were adopted by Parliament and Council in
February 2014. They include important improvements for innovation, related to:

·
An emphasis on quality, innovative
characteristics, environmental considerations and/or social aspects,
transparency in sub-contracting and stronger rules against abnormally low bids.

·
The requirement for contracting authorities to
specify clearly in the tender specifications which intellectual property rights
they (partially or fully) want to acquire, thus providing more legal certainty
to vendors in advance about which IPRs they will obtain and enabling fair
competition as innovation procurement bids can be priced correctly.

·
A new innovation partnership procedure that
allows public authorities to call for tenders to solve a specific problem
without pre-empting the solution, thus leaving room for negotiations between
the authority and the bidding companies to find the most appropriate answer.
The procedure is structured in successive stages where
contracting authorities shall pay particular attention to criteria concerning
the tenderers’ capacity and experience in the field of R&D and of
developing innovative solutions. The competition among the tenderers thus takes
place in the initial phase of the procedure; the selected tenderer develops the
solution for the contracting authority which is then directly acquired by the
contracting authority for its normal use.

·
A strengthened legal framework for
pre-commercial procurement through the clarification of the exemption for
R&D services in the public procurement Directives.

·
An improved and simplified competitive dialogue
procedure that is of use in
cases where contracting authorities are unable to define the means of
satisfying their needs.

·
Facilitated cross-border joint procurement where
contracting authorities from different Member States cooperate and jointly
award public contracts, hence exploiting economies of scale and risk-benefit
sharing, not least for innovative projects involving a greater amount of risk
than reasonably bearable by a single contracting authority. In addition,
contracting authorities from different Member States may set up joint legal
bodies.

The agreed text of the new EU Public Procurement
Directives also encourages the division of contracts into lots to improve
access to public procurement for SMEs. In general, simplification measures
throughout the directives make public procurement procedures more accessible
for SMEs, e.g. the system will be based on self-declarations and only the
winning bidder will have to provide original documentation.

In order to raise awareness and exchange
experience and best practice, a Public Procurement of Innovation Platform has been developed as a
space for procurers and related stakeholders from around Europe to discuss, share
views and get in contact. So far, more than 1,500 procurers and stakeholders
are part of the platform.[40]
Moreover, a number of high-level European conferences have been held to share
experiences about innovation procurement across Member States, including in
July 2012 in Paris, November 2012 in Madrid, March 2013 in Berlin, and November
2013 in Kraków.

To help quantify
pre-commercial procurement, the Commission is finalising a two year study
that started in 2012 for quantifying the public procurement of R&D for ICT
solutions in Europe. The study has gathered
quantitative data on the amount of R&D, the amount of ICT, and the amount
of ICT related R&D procurements conducted by
contracting authorities across Europe. Data analysis provides amounts procured
per country, across different areas of public sector activity, and also
identifies the key contracting authorities per country. The study also proposes
a methodology and guidelines to set up a systematic way of collecting in the
future this type of national data about R&D and ICT procurement
expenditure. The results of the study indicate that the level of R&D
procurement in Europe in the period 2008-2011 has not increased significantly,
except in countries where political initiatives were taken to set targets or
dedicate specific budgets to PCP.

Increasing experience with public procurement in Member States, more financial support to transnational
cooperation, and more innovation-friendly EU
Public Procurement Directives are all important steps in the right direction.
However, many programmes and initiatives are still only
at a pilot stage with limited scope and budgets.

This is due to deficiencies that persist, such as: lack
of incentives, lack of awareness, knowledge and expertise, disconnection
between public procurement and policy objectives, fragmentation of public
procurement markets and general risk aversion. There are other important factors
that are holding back the uptake of innovation procurement, such as an
insufficient coordination between different national administrations and
between national and regional/local levels, as well as the inadequate coverage
of the whole procurement chain with an analysis of requirements and open market
consultations.

Therefore, there is still a need for awareness-raising and promotion
to ensure a common understanding of the role of innovation in public
procurement and to ensure ownership in implementation and roll-out. Continued financial support for networking and for incentivising common
procurements is also necessary, as is further analysis and guidance in
implementation.

Commitment 18 – Present an
eco-innovation action plan

"By early 2011, the Commission
will present an eco-innovation action plan building on the Innovation Union and
focusing on the specific bottlenecks, challenges and opportunities for
achieving environmental objectives through innovation”

The Eco-innovation Action Plan (EcoAP)[41] is a comprehensive set
of initiatives to improve the market’s uptake of eco-innovation. Adopted by the
Commission in 2011, the plan expands the EU’s focus from green technologies to
every aspect of eco-innovation – including products and services. The aim is to
bring benefits for the environment, create growth and jobs, and ensure
more-efficient use of our increasingly scarce resources.

The EcoAP aims to target eco-innovation’s biggest barriers, such as
market uncertainty and worries about return on investment. It also addresses
eco-innovation’s main drivers, among them high energy prices, targeted
regulations and standards, and access to knowledge. Above all the plan will
strive to accelerate development and uptake of eco-innovations by stepping up
past actions, optimising the use of existing resources and mobilising
additional financial resources. The Eco-innovation action plan was followed by
a Strategic Implementation Plan agreed among Commission services in 2012.

It is composed by seven actions, including:

·
using environmental policy and legislation as a
driver to promote eco-innovation. The regulatory screening methodology was
applied to water and waste management policies in Europe (see commitment  15).
It was presented in March 2014 to the High Level Working Group of EcoAP Member States
representatives, for discussion and dissemination at national level. Further screening will be done when the thematic legislation is
being reviewed or new legislation developed. Further screening will be carried
out as part of the 'Commission Refit exercise'.

·
supporting demonstration projects and partnering
to bring to the market promising, smart and ambitious operational technologies
that have been suffering from low uptake. Eco-innovative solutions have
difficulty in penetrating into well-established markets. An approach based on
enhancing partnerships between public and private actors and establishing
networks can promote eco-innovation by achieving a critical mass that is
required for new products or processes. The Commission has designed financial
support to eco-innovation on the basis of this approach through FP7, CIP,
LIFE+, the European Structural and Investment Funds and, as from 2014, the Horizon
2020 and COSME programmes.

HydroWEEE Demo project

Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment
(WEEE) is the fastest growing waste stream in the EU, growing at a rate of 3 to
5% per year. At the same time, electric and electronic products contain high
amounts of diverse metals such as yttrium, indium, lithium, cobalt, zinc, copper,
gold, silver, or nickel. The HydroWEEE Demo constitutes a follow-up to an
earlier project HydroWEEE which studied the recovery of rare and precious
metals from WEEE using hydrometallurgical processes. The HydroWEEE processes
produced metals pure enough to be used by end-users directly for electroplating
and other applications. The HydroWEEE Demo[42] 
advances the work further with the objective to build two industrial scale,
real-life demonstration plants (one stationary and one mobile) in order to test
the performance and prove the viability of the processes. The mobile plant (in
a container) could be attractive for smaller recycling companies as several
SMEs could benefit from the same plant at different times and hence reduce the
necessary quantities of waste as well as the required investment. The
consortium consists of nine partners, five SMEs and four research
organisations, from three EU Member States (Austria, Italy and Romania) and from Serbia. The project is coordinated by Kopacek KG, an SME from Austria.

·
developing new standards boosting eco-innovation
(see commitment 16);

·
mobilising financial instruments and support
services for SMEs (see commitment 7);

·
promoting eco-innovation through the European
Innovation Partnerships (see commitment 29).

Plastic recycling for construction

The amount of plastics sent for incineration or
landfill within the EU is on the rise. At the same time there is an
ever-increasing need for aggregate for mortar and lightweight concrete. A study
conducted in the Italian market alone found 400,000 tons of aggregate a year,
destined for lightweight concrete, was being produced.

The project NUMIX[43] (High performance,
lightweight aggregate for concrete from the recycling of urban waste) set out
to develop two products from recycled plastics: a polymeric foam to replace
expanded clay as a base for lightweight concrete, and homogenous flakes to be
used as aggregate for mortar and as raw material for the expanded granules.

The project successfully produced a recycled
plastics replacement for expanded clay and by the end of project, about 6,000
tons of plastic waste was recovered. By using a plastics based lightweight
aggregate instead of expanded clay, the project reduced water consumption to
10% from 15%.

Commitment 19- Part 1 – Establish
a European Creative Industries Alliance

"In 2011 the Commission will establish a European Creative
Industries Alliance to develop new forms of support for these industries and
promote the wider use of creativity by other sectors."

The European Creative
Industries Alliance (ECIA) is an integrated policy initiative that combines
policy learning with eight concrete actions on innovation vouchers, better
access to finance, and cluster excellence and cooperation. It is an open
platform that brings together policy-makers and business support practitioners
from 28 partner organisations and 12 countries. Its overall aim is to shape a
community in Europe that actively supports creative industries as a driver for
competitiveness, job creation and structural change by developing and testing
better policies and tools for creative industries. The three-year initiative
was set up in December 2011, following an open call for proposals under
CIP-EIP. The ECIA Policy Learning Platform[44]
consists of representatives from twenty-seven organisations, including two
European Creative Districts that joined in 2013.

The European
Creative Districts aim to demonstrate how traditional industrial regions can,
via their policies and support measures for entrepreneurship and innovation,
help to create a supportive ecosystem in which creative entrepreneurs can
develop, innovate, grow and internationalise. Funded by the European Parliament
and implemented by the Commission, the two selected regional projects that were
linked to the Alliance should especially demonstrate in 2013-2014 how to
transform industrial regions through better capitalising on creativity.

The final policy
roadmap and concrete recommendations of the ECIA will be delivered at the end
of 2014.

Across its nine projects,
the Alliance has so far reportedly already mobilised €45.8 million directly or
indirectly for the creative industries on top of the €6.75 million EU support
for the initiative. For instance, the success of the VINCI project that
implemented a €100,000 innovation voucher scheme contributed to the set-up of a
National Creative Voucher scheme in Austria that provided €3 million support
for fostering cross-sectoral collaboration between SMEs from other industries
and creative service providers, with a further €1.5 million planned for 2014.

The cross-sectoral
linkages explored include the IT sector on mobile solutions, tourism, enhancing
online presence for agrofood, retail and other sectors, innovative materials
and textiles, bringing design and creative solutions in the healthcare and
manufacturing sector such as automotive.

Guidance
material has been prepared by the concrete actions such as the FAME Coaching
Manual for making creative industries investment-ready and attract investors
for creative industries businesses, the Cluster 2020 report on Taking
Co-working to the next level or the ECCL report on Creative Camps on support of
creative entrepreneurship and cross-sectoral cooperation and the development of
a coaching process scheme for creative cluster managers.

Some 3570 SMEs
have benefitted directly so far from the Alliance’s concrete actions by having
received customised innovation support such as innovation vouchers, mentoring,
training, cross-border matchmaking etc. or having participated in workshops and
events. Many further SMEs are expected to have been reached indirectly through
the linked networks and communication efforts. An additional 2460 stakeholders
participated in the Alliance’s activities, including policy-makers,
practitioners and representatives from SME intermediaries, cluster organisations,
investors, etc.

In order to
unlock the potential of the creative industries, more efforts need to be
undertaken to raise awareness of the role of creative industries in general and
of the policies and tools tested under the Alliance. The fact that creative
industries contribute to 6.7 million jobs and 3.3% of GDP, and that they grow
faster than the rest of the economy[45]
and widely support innovation in other industries is not yet so widely known.
Instead, a 2011 report[46]
shows, for instance, that the wrong perception of creative industries being
risky is maintained and presents an obstacle for growth – despite the fact that
the survival rate of UK businesses in creative industries is higher than in
other industries. Efforts will need to be made to raise awareness at high
policy level of the Alliance’s final policy roadmap.

Commitment 19- Part 2 – Set up a
European Design Leadership board

"In 2011, the Commission will set up a European Design
Leadership Board which will be invited to make proposals within a year to
enhance the role of design in innovation, for example through EU and/or
national programmes, and a 'European Design Excellence' label."

The Commission
set up the European Design Leadership Board in 2011. The objective of the board
was to make proposals on how to improve the integration of design and
user-driven innovation into innovation policy and support. This group of fifteen
experts from industry, SMEs, national and regional innovation agencies and the
academic world presented its recommendations to Vice-President Tajani in
September 2012 at the European Design Innovation Summit in Helsinki.

The Commission
also launched the European Design Innovation Initiative (EDII) call in 2011,
resulting in six projects which are currently under way. There are altogether forty-six
organisations from nineteen EU Member States involved in these six implementing
consortia.

The Industrial
Policy Communication Update and the Communication promoting cultural and
creative sectors, also stress the role of design for innovation.

The Commission
staff working document 'Implementing an Action Plan for Design-Driven
Innovation', published in 2013, describes current and upcoming actions endorsed
by the Commission and relating to promoting design-driven innovation in
different policy fields. The 14 action lines of the Action Plan build on the
recommendations of the European Design Leadership Board and on a consultation
with stakeholders. Coordination among the Commission services involved in
implementing the Action Plan for Design-Driven Innovation has resulted in important
synergies, for instance relating to the calls under Horizon 2020 (see
commitment  6).

The European
Design Innovation Platform[47]
(EDIP) is a key instrument helping the Commission to implement the Action Plan
for Design-Driven Innovation. The implementation of the EDIP started in January
2014 and will continue for three years. The EDIP is implemented by a consortium
of fourteen organisations, led by the Design Council.

The Sharing Experience Europe (SEE) Platform:
integrating design into innovation policies and programmes

The SEE Platform[48]
is a network of 11 European partners engaging with government to integrate
design into innovation policies and programmes. Through new research, workshops
for policy-makers and case studies, SEE has created a bank of evidence to
support policy-makers in developing design policies and programmes. Design is
an approach to problem-solving that can be used across the private and public
sectors to drive innovation in products, services, society and even
policy-making by integrating the needs of the user.

The SEE partners have held over fifty workshops
for policy-makers on the themes of design policy, design support, service
design, social design and design management. These workshops use hands-on tools
to build capacity for design-led innovation among government officials. The
project manager, Anna Whicher from Cardiff Metropolitan University, says “SEE
can demonstrate impact in all of the partner countries because we’ve
facilitated peer-learning and exchange among innovation policy-makers across Europe enabling them to transfer and adapt best practices in design policies and
programmes”. As a result of policy-makers participating in SEE workshops,
engagement by SEE partners and drawing on SEE research, design now features in national
level policies in Denmark, Estonia, Finland and Greece as well as at regional
level in Wales (UK), South Bohemia (Czech Republic), Greater Copenhagen
(Denmark), Central Finland, Central Macedonia (Greece), Flanders (Belgium) and
Silesia (Poland). In addition to influencing 11 policies, SEE has resulted in
the implementation of 34 new design-related programmes/initiatives. This amounts
to new investment in design programmes of over €5.8 million. Phil Allen (Head
of Knowledge Transfer, Welsh Government) says, “From SEE, the Welsh Government
has recognised the economic importance of design and is financing a number of
new programmes to enable companies to use design effectively.”

For Barbara Szafir in the Silesian Government,
“Participation in SEE has changed our mind-set within the Silesian Government
and we now put the citizens at the heart of new policy and programme
development. We were also one of the first regional governments to employ
designers as an approach to public service re-development.” According to
Bernard de Potter (Administrator General of Enterprise Flanders, Flemish
Government), “SEE has resulted in real life changes in our organisation, we
have included design in our SME support programme, we are using service design
as an instrument for improving our day to day work and design is part of our
region’s top-level economic policy”.

The six projects
under the EDII call are making a significant contribution by advocating design
as a user-centred innovation tool, delivering training material, helping to
better measure the economic impact of design and in many other ways.

The European
Design Innovation Platform will ensure capacity over three years to deliver the
digital platform as well as events, seminars and practical support, helping to
raise awareness and capability among potential beneficiaries.

As a consequence
of these actions, awareness and recognition of design as a driver for
innovation has increased among businesses, in the public sector as well as
among the policy makers. In times of economic constraints, there is growing
appetite to learn ways to deliver products and services efficiently but with a
high user satisfaction.

Nevertheless, many
EU countries still lack a robust design infrastructure and design capability
and awareness of design as a driver for innovation is still poor among the
policy makers. There is a lack of competent intermediaries in many European
regions to provide professional services to those who are interested in
learning more about how design can benefit them. Actions to upgrade the
competencies of business development organisations and other relevant
intermediaries are planned under the 2014-2015 work programme of Horizon 2020.

Commitment 20 – Promote open
access; support smart research information services

"The Commission will promote open access to the results of
publicly funded research. It will aim to make open access to publications the
general principle for projects funded by the EU research Framework Programmes.
The Commission will also support the development of smart research information
services that are fully searchable and allow results from research projects to
be easily accessed."

In July 2012 the
Commission adopted the Communication ‘Towards better access to scientific
information: boosting the benefits of public investments in research’. It was
accompanied by Recommendation to Member States on access to and preservation of
scientific information.

In Horizon 2020
(see commitment  6) the Commission has made open access to peer-reviewed
scientific publications the default setting.  A novelty in Horizon 2020 is the
Open Research Data Pilot which aims to improve and maximise access to and
re-use of research data generated by projects. The data pilot will apply to
selected core areas of Horizon 2020 but other projects outside this remit will
be able to participate on an individual voluntary basis. Projects may opt out
of the Pilot on Open Research Data in Horizon 2020 under defined circumstances,
including conflict with obligation to protect results, with confidentiality
obligations, with security obligations or with rules on protection of personal
data. They may also opt out if the achievement of the action’s main objective
would be jeopardised by making specific parts of the research data openly
accessible.

Comprehensive
search tools have been developed for peer-reviewed articles from research
receiving FP7 funding and most of the output is now easily findable through the
portal of the OpenAIRE infrastructure.[49]
Work is currently ongoing (pilot phase) for providing links between the same
research articles and the underlying research data. The infrastructure connects
to EC IT services (Common Research Datawarehouse or CORDA) and receives article
metadata from the article repositories of most EU research institutions as well
as main international thematic repositories (arXiv and Pubmed Central). The
collected information is contextualised and available for the search services
using advanced text and data mining tools.

The Commission is
also supporting projects that aim to develop digital identifier infrastructures
for objects (e.g. research datasets) and authors. Such infrastructures are
expected to enable the development of more advanced and trustable search
services (as a basic infrastructure on which next generation intelligent search
tools can rely). The ODIN project[50]
is developing an interoperability network to promote the implementation of
interoperable, open and persistent author and object identifiers (digital
object identifiers - DOI), by exploring disciplinary proofs of concept in
Social Sciences and Humanities as well as in High Energy Physics. It brings
together the DataCite consortium, which has assigned over 1.6 million DOI names
in the last few years to make research data citeable, and the Open Researcher
and Contributor ID (ORCID) initiative which has over 330,000 researchers
and contributors registered since its launch in October 2012.

The
infrastructure that now allows searching for peer-reviewed articles and
underlying data will be expanded to other kinds of literature under Horizon 2020.

Most Member
States are putting strategies in place regarding access and dissemination of
scientific information, but their approaches vary considerably, with the recent
ERA progress report noting "gradual yet visible progress".  This
refers also to the fact that several Member States choose soft law rather than
hard law when implementing OA. In order to follow up on the actions outlined in
the Recommendation on access to and preservation of scientific information
(2012), Member States were asked to nominate a National Point of Reference
(NPR) to facilitate exchange of information and enable mutual learning. A first
meeting of the NPR was held in December 2013. The meeting served as a 'get to
know each other' occasion but also to learn more about the situation in the Member
States and which aspects different Member States want to prioritise. Member
States have been asked to report on the implementation of the Recommendation in
their respective countries. A further meeting of the NPR will take place in
2014.  Furthermore, ERAC has recently launched a task force on open access and
innovation.

As for
Stakeholder Organisations, there is significant interest in the subject and a
variety of events have been organised by the community itself in a 'bottom up'
fashion. The Commission has participated and contributed to many of those, for
instance the LERU Conference of 2012, the Nordforsk Open Data Workshop, a COST
workshop, and the Science Europe ERA Europe High Level Workshop. Six
stakeholder associations have signed Memoranda of Understanding with the
Commission on the ERA, committing themselves inter alia also to promote open
access within their membership.  Open access is therefore also one of the
topics for regular discussion in the ERA High Level Stakeholder Platform and
the associated doers network.

The Commission
realises that there is a growing demand for faster and more open access to
scientific information as part of the systemic change in the whole life cycle
of research and innovation.  Thus the Commission has ingrained OA within its
new Science 2.0 policy initiative

Science is a
global endeavour and so is open access, with over 200 organisations mandating
open access in one form or another around the globe. The Commission is
therefore actively reaching out and interacting with key stakeholders in order
to exchange knowledge and identify lessons learned and best practices. The
Commission is advocating open access in a wide range of policy fora, including
the Global Research Council, G8, UNESCO, OECD, the Berlin Open Access
Conferences, the Research Data Alliance and others.

Commitment 21 – Facilitate
collaborative research and knowledge transfer

"The Commission will facilitate effective collaborative
research and knowledge transfer within the research Framework Programmes and
beyond. It will work with stakeholders to develop a set of model consortium
agreements with options ranging from traditional approaches to protect IP
through to more open ones. Mechanisms are also needed to further strengthen
knowledge transfer offices in public research organisations, in particular through
trans-national collaboration".

Effective
collaboration in research projects still remains an issue in certain research
projects, in particular between universities and other public research
organisations and industrial participants. The Commission Recommendation on the
management of intellectual property in knowledge transfer and Code of Practice
for universities and other public research organisations (C(2008)1329) already
provides guidance in this respect. Furthermore, exploitation of research results
often requires effective knowledge transfer which sometimes is lacking in
practice. The EU research funding could provide a leading example to Member
States in best practice for the management of intellectual property in
research.

The Commission
has proposed simple and clear rules for participation in Horizon 2020,
including a particular focus on exploitation and the transfer/licensing of the
results of the projects funded. The rules have been based on the widely
acknowledged Seventh Framework Programme provisions with further improvements
and clarifications and an extended scope to cover specific innovation related
aspects. The Commission has worked closely with relevant Member State representatives to ensure that the rules will be implemented with the help of a
simplified and user–friendly Model Grant Agreement.  Finally, the rules are
supported by concise and practical guidance on effective collaborative
research.

The Horizon 2020
rules for participation and dissemination foresee that members of a consortium
wishing to participate in an action shall conclude an internal agreement
(consortium agreement). Some EU and national level model consortium agreements
for research cooperation exist. However, as Horizon 2020 has a stronger focus
on innovation, an analysis on the use of consortium agreements has been
performed taking these aspects into consideration.

In view of this,
existing model agreements used in the Member States, associated countries and
in major trading partners have been identified. An analysis has also been
performed to identify the status of these model agreements, the impact of these
agreements on knowledge transfer activity, core common elements and critical
differences. Based on this analysis and in consultation with major stakeholders,
guidance on the use of consortium agreements will be produced and integrated
into the Horizon 2020 online grants manual.

Although a large
number of knowledge transfer offices have been established over the last
decade, the quality and size of knowledge transfer offices, and the resources
available to them, vary greatly across the EU. There is considerable expertise
and support available, but there are indications that communication within and
between national networks of knowledge transfer offices (KTOs) is not presently
sufficiently well developed to ensure that expertise and support is made
available to those who need it.

An analysis has
been performed on the role and impact of existing knowledge transfer networks,
platforms and initiatives and their activities to identify what additional
activity or support would enhance the level of knowledge transfer. In addition,
an analysis has been done on existing financial instruments, particularly on IP
market trends, to foster technology transfer activities and the potential for
additional support via EU-level financial instruments or facilities. The
Commission works closely with key stakeholders with the aim to further
identify, collect and share best practices as well as to identify and discuss
solutions for issues of common concern and emerging issues.

The Commission
is working with relevant stakeholder groups to facilitate and support the
development and cross-border networking of national knowledge transfer office
networks and the work of existing pan-European networks. The Commission has
launched the 'European TTO Circle', an initiative that aims at enhancing
collaboration on knowledge transfer among the TTOs (Technology Transfer
Offices) of large European public research organisations[51]. One of the
tasks of the TTO Circle is to foster sharing of expertise, the exchange of best
practices and the development of synergies at European level in the field of IP
and knowledge transfer. In addition, the activities include also facilitating
R&D collaboration, raising entrepreneurial culture in PROs and
strengthening the capacities of the knowledge transfer officers.

As knowledge transfer offices
are only one element in the area of knowledge transfer and open innovation, the
Commission has committed in the context of the European Research Area (see
commitment 4), to developing a comprehensive policy approach on open innovation
and knowledge transfer. For this purpose, the Commission has established an
Expert Group to assess what can be done to improve knowledge sharing and
utilisation. The Expert Group has delivered a report which offers a new,
advanced open innovation paradigm: it sets out to describe how to build and
fund ecosystems for co-creation.

The Commission has also launched a study with the overall objective
to consolidate an EU wide information base on open innovation and knowledge
transfer. This includes an in-depth analysis on performance of Public Research
Organisations and Higher Education Institutes performing research in knowledge
transfer through new and emerging mechanisms, as well as perceptions of
stakeholders on the barriers, challenges, on-going practices and success
factors. The findings will contribute to the development of a comprehensive
policy approach to knowledge transfer and open innovation as identified in the
2012 ERA Communication. The results of the study will also help to determine
which additional measures might be needed to ensure an optimal flow of
knowledge between the public research organisations and business thereby
contributing to the development of the knowledge based economy.

Commitment 22 – Develop a European
knowledge market for patents and licencing

“By the end of 2011, working closely with Member States and stakeholders, the Commission will make proposals to develop a European knowledge
market for patents and licensing. This should build on Member State experience in trading platforms that match supply and demand, market places to enable
financial investments in intangible assets, and other ideas for breathing new
life into neglected intellectual property, such as patent pools and innovation
brokering.”

To facilitate
the emergence of a genuine European knowledge market for patents and licences,
the Commission investigated a set of options for a valorisation instrument for intellectual
property (IP) at EU level, also in response to the invitation by the European
Council, which put emphasis on the development of options
for an exploitation instrument that could make the access to the knowledge
market notably by SMEs easier.

As a first step,
a group of experts involving stakeholders and Member States to gather evidence and provide a technical assessment about existing
and emerging initiatives was established. A study commissioned to assess
financial market places for IP also included a survey
open to Member States and stakeholders. The findings and conclusions were
documented in two published reports[52]
that constituted an input to the Staff Working Document
(SWD) ‘Towards enhanced patent valorisation for growth and jobs’.[53] The SWD presents the major obstacles that
European companies, mainly SMEs, face in exploiting patents, especially
‘dormant patents’. While describing current initiatives aiming at addressing
issues in this area in Member States and at the level of the EU, the document also outlines short-,
medium- and long-term options which could be undertaken in the Union to tap the
potential for economic growth by better exploiting patents.

The SWD described a series of barriers to exploitation of patents
including:

the difficulty in assessing patent value;
difficult access to funding  of commercialisation of patents;
low transparency of the patent market;
insufficient awareness of business opportunities;
high transaction costs.

In order to
gather insights on how to address the barriers identified, two Expert Groups
were created:

Expert group
on IP valuation: This expert group was created to address the difficulty
in assessing value and in access to funding. To do this, the group was
tasked to look at which improvements could be done regarding the
evaluation of the economic value of IP in order to foster IP related
transactions and IP based finance. The Expert Group has identified the following
main barriers to the efficient use of IP valuation by stakeholders: lack
of data on IP transactions; issues regarding trust on the IP valuations
performed in the market; the lack of reporting of the IP owned by the
company in company’s annual reporting as well as little engagement by
banks in accepting intangibles as collaterals for loans. It has also
proposed policy recommendations on how to overcome these barriers.

Expert group
on Patent valorisation: studies indicate that a large share of all granted
patents remain unused. Some of these may potentially be of interest to
third parties for commercialisation. Europe may therefore benefit from a
market mechanism which would allow the supply and demand side of unused
patents to meet to enable the establishment of purchase or licensing
agreements. An expert group on patent valorisation was created and it will
look at how to increase transparency of the IP market, increase awareness
of business opportunities around IP and decrease transactions costs linked
to IP transactions. The expert group will consider options for EU level
action to foster aggregation of Intellectual Property that could be
(partly) funded or in other ways promoted at the EU level. The expert
group will specifically address patent funds, patent pools and other forms
of aggregation including brokerages. The expert group is due to report in the
second half of 2014.

A pilot project
was also launched in 2013 to assess the feasibility of an IP market place to
raise the exploitation of patents from the demand-side and it will deliver its
results at the end of 2014.

Commitment
23 – Safeguard against the use of IPRs for anti-competitive purposes

"The Commission will examine the role of Competition Policy in
safeguarding against the use of intellectual property rights for
anti-competitive purposes. It will analyse the implications of collaborative
IPR agreements as part of its review of the application of its anti-trust rules
to horizontal agreements between competing companies."

The Commission
adopted the Guidelines on horizontal agreements in 2010. The revised chapter on
standardisation agreements provides guidance on how industry should structure
their standard setting agreements in order to avoid the risk of infringing EU
competition law. In particular, the guidelines provide a safe harbour for
standard setting agreements that respect certain conditions, including
conditions for ensuring transparency about intellectual property rights that
could become relevant for the standard.

In relation to
misuse of intellectual property rights in this context, for example the so
called patent ambush, the line is to, to the extent possible, minimise the risk
for that type of behaviour by building in safeguards in the standard setting
process. These rules now apply to national competition authorities, the
Commission, companies and national courts.

Maximising
social and territorial cohesion      
1.
Key messages

The Innovation
Union puts emphasis on new strategies and tools with the goal of achieving
increased cohesion whilst encouraging excellence, tackling societal challenges
and creating jobs through innovation.

There is an urgent
need to tap into Europe’s unexploited potential in research and innovation
through a stronger involvement of those Member States and regions that are less
involved in R&I. Smart specialisation strategies with a sound and
evidence-based focus on regional assets and strengths are expected to bring
convergence in innovation performance across regions and countries. Horizon
2020 also includes a set of measures Teaming, Twinning and ERA Chairs aimed at
‘Spreading Excellence and Widening Participation’ which contribute to the
achievement of this same goal.

The obligation to
develop Smart specialisation strategies as a precondition for European Regional
Development Funds' innovation-related investments triggered a massive number of
regions and Member States to reconsider their research and innovation policies
and strategies. This strategy development was not limited to ERDF investments,
but also impacted on innovation investments under other national and regional
investments, including from the European Agricultural Fund for Rural
Development and investments in human capital for research and innovation,
including European Social Fund investments. This led in many Member States and regions to a significant change in the policy-making culture in terms of
stakeholder involvement, inter-departmental cooperation, evidence-based policy
making and a shift towards a holistic and systemic innovation policy concept.
Such strategies are a key stepping stone towards place-specific, knowledge-based
economic transformation.

Social and
public sector innovation have moved towards the top of political attention. The
Commission now supports social innovation in a number of ways, including though
support for the up-scaling of successful projects. A lot has been achieved in
the area of public sector innovation, where dedicated research actions were
complemented by the creation of related inducement prizes and exploratory work
was conducted to analyse possible future actions in this field.

New actors have
been informed, consulted and involved in these actions, spreading the
innovation culture to radically new areas and raising awareness about the
potential for innovation-based growth across European regions, social groups
and the public and private sector, paving the way for a more inclusive economy.

2.
Progress so far
Commitment 24 and 25 – Improve the
use of structural funds for research and innovation

"Starting in 2010: Member States should considerably improve
their use of existing Structural Funds for research & innovation projects,
helping people to acquire the necessary skills, improving the performance of
national systems and implementing smart specialisation strategies and
trans-national projects. This should also apply to the pre-accession funding
for EU candidate countries. The Commission stands ready to assist and will use
its regional research and cluster initiatives to support this change and
establish a “smart specialisation platform” by 2012, including further support
for the emergence of world class clusters. Further details are in an
accompanying Communication.

Member States should initiate the preparation of post 2013
Structural Fund programmes with an increased focus on innovation and smart
specialisation. Future regulations governing the operation of the European
Regional Development Fund should further commit substantial financial resources
to support innovation initiatives within the regions of the European Union.”

Research and
Innovation strategies for smart specialisation are a key element to ensure
optimal innovation impact of the future Cohesion policy investment. These
strategies are about better, stakeholder-driven and comprehensive policy-making
to foster place-specific, knowledge-based economic transformation.

The introduction of
the smart specialisation concept in the strategic planning of EU Member States and
regions has been a key factor in aligning the European Regional Development
Fund (ERDF) with other growth policy measures through intelligent policy
design. This was triggered by including smart specialisation strategies as an
ex-ante conditionality for investment priorities under Research, Technological
Development and Innovation for all Members States. The expected ERDF funding
for R&D, innovation, ICT, competitiveness of SMEs and the low-carbon
economy is about EUR 110 billion in 2014-20.

The Common
Provisions Regulation for the ESIF[54]
endorsed the proposal of the Commission and defines 'smart specialisation
strategies' as "national or regional innovation strategies which set
priorities in order to build competitive advantage by developing and matching
research and innovation own strengths to business needs in order to address
emerging opportunities and market developments in a coherent manner, while
avoiding duplication and fragmentation of efforts; a smart specialisation
strategy may take the form of, or be included in, a national or regional
research and innovation (R&I) strategic policy framework."

The Commission has supported
Member States in this transition through the development of the 'Guide to
Research and Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialisation' (RIS3) in
cooperation with leading academics, important European networks, advisory
groups and the OECD. It also actively supports the Member States and regions in
the development of such strategies, for instance it has sponsored expert advice
for over 15 national and 80 regional strategies in a total of 20 countries. A
series of thematic guides was also prepared and disseminated among national and
regional policy makers and managing authorities.[55] Guidance material has
been developed on how to improve synergies between ESIF investments, Horizon
2020, COSME, Erasmus+, CreativeEurope and digital services funding from the
Connecting Europe Facility. Smart specialisation strategies play a pivotal role
in this, as national and regional innovation policy makers have to consider
up-stream and down-stream actions from Horizon 2020, and thrive for innovation
excellence in a limited number of priority areas.

Further support is
provided by a Mirror Group on smart specialisation composed by academic
advisers, representatives of EU networks and initiatives and international
organisations like OECD and World Bank .

The Smart
Specialisation Platform[56]
was launched in 2012 to support regions and Member States in developing and
implementing smart specialisation strategies. The services it offers include:
advice, access to data material, guidance and methodological support, examples
of good practice and mutual learning tools to peers and experts. Over 160
authorities (including 14 Member States) are registered to the Platform.

In order to help
regions to position themselves, to find their unique niches and to seek out
potential partners for collaboration, the Commission has developed Eye@RIS3, a
mapping tool that provides an overview on the emerging smart specialisations
across Europe.[57]
This tool, in its pilot phase, will enable the cooperation among national and
regional innovation actors around shared smart specialisation fields.

Research and Innovation
Strategies for Smart Specialisation in Flanders

In Flanders, change was
needed because of persisting competitiveness and productivity problems. The
government decided to identify competitive advantages in specific R&D and
innovation domains/clusters. On the one hand, nanotechnology and biotechnology
are two sectors of activity already strong in Flanders. On the other hand,
there are market opportunities opening up due to societal challenges. The
Flemish healthcare system is transforming into a more personalised ‘care and
cure’ system. The challenge is to improve the performance while keeping it
affordable.

Nano for Health (NFH) is an example of smart specialisation for
Flanders, which can contribute to the challenge of implementing personalised
‘care and cure’ programmes, by combining the complementary strengths of
nano-electronics and biotechnology at the crossroads of two important clusters
and ecosystems in Flanders, namely DSP Valley and FlandersBio.[58]

NFH is capitalising on complementarities,
especially at the research level. DSP Valley has a strategic research centre,
IMEC, specialised in miniaturisation and nano-electronics. FlandersBio has
another research centre, VIB, specialised in biotechnology and life sciences.
The goal of this combination is to offer new possibilities to successfully make
the transition towards ‘personalised therapy’ in the health sector, which in
turn empowers new and emerging industries.

Several projects have already been developed and reached industrial
development stage. The Flemish contact offers some examples, all of them
resulting in new job creation:

·
Implantable stimulators enabled by
ultra-low power electronics (i.e. N4H success mainly electronics driven)

·
Hearing implants developed by
Cochlear/DSP Valley

·
Personalised care through tailored and
targeted medicine (mainly biotech/pharma driven) by Janssen
Pharmaceutics/FlandersBio

·
New solutions for personalised care
through rapid diagnostics: instant diagnosis by combining know-how at the
crossroads of nano-electronics (including micro-fluidics) and biotechnology,
e.g. Biocartis combines the know-how of DSP Valley and FlandersBio

·
Other possibilities: Eyelab diagnostic
chip, wearable ECG or EEG monitoring (these are still under development)

Fifteen expert
groups for the EU 12, plus Greece, Portugal and Spain – each comprising two
experts – were set up in 2013 to identify key R&I related issues in the
development of the smart specialisation strategies. The work of the expert
groups is now complete and their final reports have been made available to the
Commission and the Member States. Other expert groups have looked into some
specific aspects of smart specialisation, such as the involvement of
universities[59]
or the role that clusters can play.

Under Horizon 2020, 'Spreading
excellence and widening participation' includes specific measures for engaging
those countries that are less involved in the EU R&I effort, e.g. Teaming,
Twinning and ERA Chairs that will support the implementation of research
related aspects of smart specialisation strategies. The
actions of Teaming and Twinning will create new Centres of Excellence and
expertise and encourage pan-European networking among researchers with a strong
focus on excellence and innovation. They will facilitate knowledge transfer and
exchange of best practice between research institutions, building on the
strengths of leading partners. ERA Chairs will bring outstanding researchers to
universities and other research institutions that have high potential for research
excellence. Technical assistance to cohesion countries
for the translation of the RIS3 into concrete measures is provided by the
'Joint Assistance to Support Projects in European Regions' (JASPERS).

Synergies with smart
specialisation strategies can also be envisaged under Horizon 2020 Marie
Skłodowska-Curie COFUND which supports the internationalisation of human
resources in research and innovation and provides co-financing to regional or
national programmes in order to spread excellent practices in research training
and career development.

In the coming years the Commission will support the implementation
of action plans to develop the outstanding RIS3, support the regions and Member
States in their efforts to strengthen the inter-regional and trans-national
cooperation on smart specialisation fields in order to achieve critical mass,
complementarity and the transformation of value-chains and internationalisation
clusters (thematic smart specialisation platforms), monitor the implementation
of the RIS3 of the Member States and regions. It will also support cooperation
across borders.

Commission support for the emergence of world class clusters will
continue with the COSME Programme and Territorial Cooperation’s INTERREG EUROPE
Programmes. The latter will support cooperation platforms for innovation
stakeholders on strategic domains and will partially continue the activities of
the FP7 transnational cooperation of research-driven clusters.

Commitment 26 – Launch a Social
Innovation pilot; promote social innovation in European Social Fund

"The Commission will launch a European Social Innovation pilot
which will provide expertise and a networked 'virtual hub' for social
entrepreneurs and the public and third sectors.       
- It will promote social innovation through the European Social Fund (ESF)
building on the significant investments in social innovation which the ESF has
made over the last ten years, all along the innovation cycle. This will be
complemented by support to innovative social experiments to be developed in the
framework of the European Platform against Poverty.     
- Social innovation should become a mainstream focus in the next generation of
European Social Fund programmes. Member States are encouraged to already step
up efforts to promote social innovation through the ESF."

The European Commission provides support to social innovation in a
number of ways. As a first concrete action, the Social Innovation Europe platform[60] was launched in 2011
as a virtual hub connecting social innovators and providing an overview of
actions throughout Europe. Since its creation, the platform has federated 5,000
registered users/contributors from 35 countries and receives on average 7,000
visits a month. It has become a reference portal in Europe, which is recognised
for its hands-on content.

Furthermore, social policy now has a strong focus on social
innovation, namely under the European Social Fund and in particular through the
Progress programme which is replaced by the Employment and Social Innovation
Programme since January 2014. Support for social innovation against poverty and
social inclusion is also provided by the European Platform against poverty and social
exclusion.

In the 2014-2020 programming period, social innovation is going to
be mainstreamed. In the new regulation on the European Social Fund, the
approach to social innovation is more strategic. Member States have to
programme social innovation-related activities, but they are given the
flexibility to target social needs that are particularly relevant to them. Such
measures are meant to test and scale up ideas that will influence other policy
areas, therefore spreading social innovation to new sectors.

In addition,
supported by the 'Capacities' part of FP7, a pilot action on networks of
incubators for social innovation was launched in 2013 to support two European
networks to assess, support and scale up social innovations in Europe. For this action, incubators include any organisation that acts as such at local or
regional level, including universities and business networks. The two networks,
supported with €1 million each, with a broad geographical coverage across the
EU, have started to assess, provide support and scale-up hundreds of local social
innovations, disseminating them also to other regions in Europe. The action will
also provide new knowledge and methods that will contribute to the challenge of
scaling up social innovations, which are successful at small scale, to reach
their potential.

In order to raise
awareness on this topic, the European Social Innovation Competition is
organised every year since 2012 to directly support new solutions and raise
awareness about social innovation. The first two editions focused on the best
social innovation solutions to help people move towards work or into new types
of work. The first edition attracted more than 600 ideas and the second more
than 1,200 ideas for that purpose. Social innovation is also covered by other
EU awards such as the RegioStars awards.

Commitment 27 – Support a research
programme on public sector and social innovation; pilot a European Public
Sector Innovation Scoreboard

"Starting in 2011, the Commission will support a substantial
research programme on public sector and social innovation, looking at issues
such as measurement and evaluation, financing and other barriers to scaling up
and development.
As an immediate step, it will pilot a European Public Sector Innovation
Scoreboard as a basis for further work to benchmark public sector innovation.
It will explore with Member States whether it is appropriate to bring together
new learning experiences and networks for public sector leaders at European
level."

The public
sector is a hidden source of enormous innovation potential, which we need to
encourage. Social innovation, new and emerging technologies, digital platforms,
all processes and tools that facilitate greater engagement of citizens and more
opening of public administrations play big parts in rendering the public sector
more innovative and continuously aligned to the needs of society.

Support for social
innovation research has increased in scope and budget in the last three years
of FP7 (from €4 million in 2011 to around €12 million in 2013, with more
topics). The areas of research include the role of social innovation in the
fight against inequalities, its role in the public sector and in innovative
social services, its economic underpinnings, its role for empowering citizens
and promoting social change, the role of the third sector in socio-economic
development and social entrepreneurship.

Horizon 2020's broad
approach to innovation further strengthens social and public sector innovation
and provides many opportunities for take-up across all areas. For the first
multiannual work programme of Horizon 2020, social innovation is relevant to
many topics, such as industrial leadership and societal challenges.

Specific actions
supporting social innovation are also included under the 'new forms of
innovation' call in Societal Challenge 6: Europe in a changing world:
inclusive, innovative and reflective societies.

These include
support to create mobile, personalised public services, using open data and
services, enhancing transparency and decision-making processes of public
administrations, the launch of a Social innovation community in 2015, support
to the public sector observatory of the OECD, a new competition for the prize of
the European capital of Innovation, as well as continuation of support to the
Social innovation competition for the next years

With Horizon
2020, the objectives of public sector innovation and the reforms needed to
achieve them will be significantly advanced. The approach takes into account
both new technologies and the necessary accompanying organisational changes
towards more effective, efficient and open public administrations.

At
the end of 2013 the Commission published the Report of the Expert Group on
Public sector innovation 'Powering European Public sector Innovation: towards a
new architecture'.  The report proposed four principles for a new innovation
paradigm in the public sector: co-design and co-creation of innovative
solutions; adoption of new and collaborative service delivery models; embracing
of creative disruption from technology; and adoption of an attitude of
experimentation and entrepreneurship.[61]

Awards have a
strong potential to drive innovation through the public recognition of achievements
and the provision of role models. Through the Prize for Innovation in Public
Administration for example, the Commission has given visibility to the most
dynamic, forward-looking and innovative public administrations. These cases can
inspire other public administrations in Europe to innovate.

The European
capital of Innovation Award, also gave visibility to the role of cities as
ecosystems driving innovation. In addition, a new action to be launched in 2015
provides support forpublic administrations to acquire the innovation skills
needed to drive innovation, such as creativity and idea generation, through an
innovation leadership programme that aims to reach out to some 60,000 leaders
throughout the EU, at national, regional and local level.

To ensure
monitoring of public sector innovation, the pilot European Public Sector
Innovation Scoreboard (EPSIS) was published in June 2013. It developed 22
indicators to measure public sector innovation in dimensions such as human
resources, quality of public services, innovation capacity, drivers and
barriers of public sector innovation, innovators in public administration,
effects on business performance, government procurement. The data availability
on public sector innovation is still scarce but the awareness of the need for
better benchmarking and monitoring is growing. To this end, the Commission
established an agreement with the OECD that prepared the first proposals for
preliminary measurement guidelines. These proposals have already been presented
and discussed in a number of technical meetings with international experts and
EU and OECD Member States. The findings will contribute to building an evidence
base for improving the measurement of innovation and can help shape proposals
for extending the Oslo Manual[62]
framework to the public sector in a future revision. This is a crucial step as
it will give specific guidance on mainstreaming the public sector innovation
issues into the regular data collection.

In parallel, the
Commission has undertaken other activities to better understand and measure
public sector innovation. Some aspects of the public sector innovation have already
been included in the current Community Innovation Survey (CIS) 2012 and are
planned to be included in the forthcoming CIS 2014, most notably the role of
the public sector on business innovation and innovative public procurement. In
addition, another Flash Eurobaromter (Innobarometer) has been conducted to
learn more about the role of the public sector in commercialisation of innovation
across the EU.

It is planned
that another European Public Sector Innovation Scoreboard will be published in
2015.

Commitment 28 – Consult social
partners on interaction between the knowledge economy and the labour market

"The Commission will consult the social partners to examine how
the knowledge economy can be spread to all occupational levels and all sectors.
It will ask the social partners for proposals on how to develop a sectoral
labour market strategy for the caring sector."

The issue of how to spread the knowledge
economy to all occupational levels is a crucial one to make innovation
pervasive to our society and to make it flourish across economic sectors. To
this end, the Commission has started discussions with social partners, so as to
make this process truly inclusive and to take into account the specificities of
each sector.

This commitment is at an early stage of
implementation. European social partners were contacted in 2013, to agree on a
schedule for discussions around the innovation Union and the European Workplace
Innovation Network (EUWIN) network and their potential for spreading innovation
to all occupational levels and sectors.

The European social dialogue committee at
cross-industry level and the sectoral social dialogue committees[63]  were chosen as the most appropriate frame for these exchanges. Two
sectors have integrated the topic into their work programme[64]  and eight sectoral EU social partners' organisations[65] and the European Confederation of
Executives and Managerial Staff (CEC) confirmed their interest in participating
in such dialogues.

The Commission has also started presenting
sector-specific innovation–related information, such as the report on 'Retail
Sector Innovation',[66] which includes recommendations for social partners and the skills councils.[67] The report was presented at the commerce
sector's EU Social Dialogue Committee meeting at the beginning of 2014 and met
the interest of both employers' and trade unions' representatives. It was also
presented to the recently created commerce skills council[68], with the aim to help the council identify
skills gaps and needs in term of innovation in this sector.

Other ways of engaging social partners have
also been explored. For instance the social partners of the agriculture sector[69] are also members of the Board of the European Innovation
Partnership (EIP) on Agricultural Productivity and Sustainability (see
commitment 29).

Commission services will continue to liaise
with EU social partners and organise an exchange of views between them and the
Commission services at a Liaison Forum meeting in 2014 with the aim to recall
the importance of the Innovation Union and to assess the way social partners
can further contribute to this process in the coming years.

Pooling
forces to achieve breakthroughs: European Innovation Partnerships
1.
Key messages

European Innovation Partnerships (EIPs) present a new approach to EU
research and innovation by being challenge-driven, acting
across the whole research and innovation chain, and streamlining existing instruments and initiatives.

Five EIPs have been launched in the areas of active and healthy
ageing, water, agricultural productivity and sustainability, raw materials and smart
cities and communities. All five are now in the implementation stage, having
identified priorities and engaged a wider range of actors across the demand and
supply sides of innovation.

In a short period of time, the EIPs have established themselves in
the European research and innovation landscape and mobilised a wide range of
partners. With more than 700 commitments from new stakeholder groupings so far,
EIPs have proved a considerable outreach, and first results are emerging:
mapping of good practices, practical toolkits for replication, collection of
evidence on impact and implementation of integrated services.

An expert group has assessed progress and evaluated the overall
performance of the EIPs. The group has concluded that the EIP is the right
approach to help enable future European economic growth
and welfare. Their recommendations imply improvements that can be made to the current EIPs and
significant changes to the way that future EIPs are launched and run.

2.
Progress so far
Commitment 29 – Pilot and present
proposals for European Innovation Partnerships

"The Council, Parliament, Member States, industry and other
stakeholders are invited to support the innovation partnership concept and to
indicate the specific commitments they will undertake to make the concept work.
The Commission invites all key stakeholders to commit themselves to pooling
efforts and resources to achieve the partnership's intended objectives.

The Commission would welcome views and ideas on the areas being
considered for future partnerships and other possible candidates that meet the
success criteria.

As a first concrete step, the Commission has started preparations in
the pilot partnership on active and healthy ageing in 2011. Taking into account
the views of Parliament and Council and input from other stakeholders, it will
present an assessment of the experiences in this pilot in summer 2011, and
present proposals for further partnerships in autumn 2011."

The European Innovation Partnership on
Active and Healthy Ageing (EIP AHA) was the first to be launched, in May
2011. It aims to make the EU a place of excellence in innovation for healthy
ageing, by securing a triple win for Europe: (1) improving the health status
and quality of life of European citizens, with a particular focus on older
people; (2) supporting the long-term sustainability and efficiency of health
and social care systems; and (3) enhancing the competitiveness of EU industry
through an improved business environment providing the foundations for growth
and expansion of new markets.

·
In November 2011 the EIP AHA Steering Group
presented its Strategic Implementation Plan (SIP) with 14 priority
areas. In addition, horizontal actions were identified that address framework
conditions, promote connections between the different priority areas of work,
and are enablers for all other actions, including regulatory and funding
schemes.

·
Six Action Groups were launched in 2012 in the
subset of those priority areas where stakeholders had demonstrated significant
readiness and commitment to engage: (1) Prescription and adherence action at
regional level; (2) Falls Prevention; (3) Prevention of functional decline and
frailty; (4) Integrated care; (5) Independent living; and (6) Age-friendly
environments.

AHA Action Groups

The six AHA Action Groups gather over 500
commitments, comprising 1,000 regions and municipalities and 3,000 partners,
including research/academia, civil society, health and care providers, large
industry and SMEs, mobilising over €1 billion. Their work is expected to have
an impact on over 2 million patients and 30 million citizens by 2015. Their
first deliverables, which included a collation of good practices and toolkits
for their replication, as well as a compilation of evidence on the impact of
implementing integrated services, were presented in November 2013.

·
In February 2012 the Commission endorsed the SIP
of the EIP AHA and set out a number of EU-level actions to support it. The SIP proposed governance arrangements for effective implementation,
suggested a monitoring and assessment framework to ensure timely delivery of
objectives and headline target, proposed the improvement and development of
framework conditions and singled out the added-value of EU interventions.

·
The EIP AHA has issued two open Invitations for
Commitments whereby groups of stakeholders were able to propose initiatives
that support the specific SIP actions. Candidates meeting the criteria were
then invited to join and contribute to one or more of the six Action Groups.
Since spring 2012, 500 commitments have been submitted, bringing together public
authorities, technology companies, health providers, industry and
non-governmental organisations. The Action Groups have developed action plans
around the commitments and already begun to implement them.

·
The EIP AHA also issued an Invitation for
Reference Sites. These are coalitions of regions, cities, integrated hospitals
or care organisations that are able to demonstrate impactful and innovative
practices which could be transferred to other European contexts. They provide
the EIP with examples of comprehensive, innovation-based approaches to active
and healthy ageing - solutions that can be scaled-up and replicated across the
EU. After a peer review process the EIP AHA has selected a total of 32
Reference Sites, from 12 Member States.

AHA Reference Sites

The 32 AHA Reference Sites represent a rich
collection of real life examples of ICT-enabled innovation for active and
healthy ageing being implemented within a coherent strategy. They are committed
to working with others to replicate transferable elements of their schemes
while sharing lessons learned and conditions for success. So more regions will
be able to benefit from their successes, and avoid making expensive mistakes
along the way. Some examples: A shared IT system in Denmark collects and shares
information on citizens with chronic illness, allowing them to stay at home.
The Andalusian e-health strategy is increasing e-prescriptions and reducing
hospital admissions through prevention, bringing savings of €200 million. The
Circles of Care service in the province of Noord-Brabant has brought savings of
€ 1.5 million per year for night staff care. The Scottish risk prediction tool
helps identify patients with a risk of emergency admission to hospital, leading
to less hospital admission, reduced hospital stay and savings of €250 per
patient.

·
The EIP AHA features a web-based marketplace
that allows stakeholders to exchange innovative ideas, find partners, share
emerging initiatives and disseminate evidence. So far, more than 1,300 partners
have signed up to the marketplace and 300 ideas and/or initiatives have been
posted. Two AHA Conferences of Partners have taken place so far, in November
2012 and in November 2013, to discuss how to implement and scale up innovations
for active and healthy ageing and what contribution they can make to regions. A
third Conference of Partners is scheduled for December 2014.

A year after the adoption of the six action plans the preliminary
achievements centre mostly on the analysis and sharing of good practices,
mutual learning, dissemination and awareness-raising, and cooperation among
partners.

The next challenge of the EIP AHA is large-scale deployment. Pilots
and deployment actions are taking place, as demonstrated by Reference Sites and
good practices, but still on a smaller scale than needed to reach the overall
goal by 2020 of two more healthy life years for the European citizen. To this
end a 'Reference Sites and Regions Twinning' exercise is under way. It aims to
bring together regions that are keen to learn, with regions that have
knowledge, tools and experience to offer on a particular issue or in a
particular area. The first twinning event took place at the Conference of
Partners in 2013 and the next one is scheduled for the eHealth Forum in May
2014. Additional efforts towards scaling up are being developed in a number of
regions' 'smart specialisation strategies' which may be supported, among
others, by EU regional funding (see commitments 24 and 25).

In recent years, a number of EU programmes and initiatives have
evolved in line with the EIP AHA action areas, enhancing coherence, consistency
and impact. Examples are focus areas and priorities of the first work programme
under Horizon 2020, the Active and Assisted Living (AAL) Joint Programme 2, and
the call for an EIT KIC on 'Innovation for healthy living and active ageing'.

After the endorsement of the AHA SIP, the Commission put forward
proposals for additional EIPs, drawing lessons from the pilot. In February
2012, the Commission proposed EIPs on 'Agricultural Productivity and
Sustainability' and on 'Raw Materials'. In May 2012 it added a proposal for an
EIP on 'Water' and in July it proposed a 'Smart Cities and Communities' EIP.

Following the endorsement from the Council in June 2012, the EIP
on Water delivered its Strategic Implementation Plan in December 2012. The
partnership aims to achieve the following headline
target by 2020: identify, test, scale-up, disseminate and stimulate the uptake
of innovative solutions by the market and society for ten major water related
challenges.

The City Blueprints Action Group

The City Blueprints Action Group of the Water EIP
includes a so-called 'learning alliance' of European
cities to share their best practices and tools on Urban Water Cycle Services
with the objective to make investments in urban water
systems infrastructure more efficient

·
This aim has been further elaborated through
four general headline targets: (1) Resolving water challenges with sustainable
innovations; (2) Creating market opportunities and removing barriers for global
water solutions; (3) Increasing competitiveness of the European water sector
through fostering partnerships; and (4) Supporting the green economy through
blue innovation.

·
Together with the SIP, a first Invitation for Commitments for
Action Groups was issued, resulting in 64 commitments involving more than 700
organisations and the setting up of nine Action Groups. Another 38 commitments,
involving over 550 organisations from 45 countries, were received in response
to a second 'Invitation for Commitments' launched in November 2013, resulting
in 16 selected Action Groups. All selected Action Groups have a wide spread
across the innovation value chain. The Action Groups are committing to work on
developing and applying innovative solutions related to one or more of the
priority actions described in the SIP: (1) Water reuse
and recycling, (2) Water and wastewater treatment, including recovery of
resources, (3) Water-energy nexus, (4) Flood and drought risk management, (5)
Ecosystem services, (6) Water governance, (7) Decision support systems and
monitoring, and (8) Financing for innovation. Furthermore, 'smart technology'
has been identified as an enabling factor within all other priorities. Other
European and national water related initiatives have aligned their strategic
agendas to the SIP.

·
The EIP Water Task Force has developed action
plans for the removal of persistent barriers to (water) innovation in the areas
of 1) Public Procurement; 2) Public-Public and Public-Private Partnerships; 3)
Financial Instruments; 4) Regulation; and 5) Show Cases and Demonstration
Sites.

·
The Water EIP has also developed a web-based
marketplace - an online collaboration platform for information exchange,
matchmaking and teaming-up of public and private sector experts, organisations,
innovative solutions and resources. The marketplace went live in August 2013
and now has well over 1,000 registered users. Over 2,600 readers have
subscribed to the monthly EIP Water newsletter. A first EIP Water Conference
took place in November 2013, and a second conference is planned for November
2014.

The VERDYGO Action Group

The VERDYGO Action Group will prove the
innovative concept of modular low-cost adjustable waste water treatment plants
in real-scale demonstration sites in Romania and Spain and possibly other
locations.

The Agricultural Productivity and Sustainability EIP
was endorsed by Council in June 2012 and its Steering Group reached an
agreement on its Strategic Implementation Plan in July 2013. The partnership identifies the headline target of reversing the
recent trend of diminishing productivity gains by 2020 (indicator for
productivity and efficiency) and securing soil functionality in Europe at a satisfactory level by 2020 (indicator for sustainability of agriculture).

·
Four challenges are addressed as priorities: (1)
Resource efficiency, (2) Provision of societal and environmental goods and
ecosystem services, (3) Establishing a sustainable consumption and supply
chain, and (4) Innovation culture.

·
An EIP Service Point was set up in April 2013 to collect and
disseminate the results of the work of Operational Groups under the Rural
Development Programme and the results of relevant Horizon 2020 projects. The
service point is also providing help to find partners and information,
facilitate exchange of knowledge and experience, and liaise with other existing
networks in order to gather all relevant expertise and information about
innovation initiatives.

·
The EIP service point animates discussion on innovation in
priority areas via Focus Groups. In these groups, experts discuss potential
ways forward on how to address specific challenges in specific areas of action.
The results of these focus groups are also disseminated via workshops and
seminars.

·
So far, ten Focus Groups have started in the areas of organic
farming, protein crops, animal husbandry, genetic resources, organic matter
content of soils, integrated pest management in brassica production, high
nature value farming profitability, mainstreaming precision farming,
profitability of permanent grassland, and fertiliser efficiency with focus on
horticulture in open field.

The Raw Materials EIP was endorsed by Council in October
2012, and its Steering Group adopted its Strategic Implementation Plan in
September 2013. The partnership aims to ensure the sustainable supply of raw
materials to the European economy whilst increasing benefits for society as a
whole.

·
This will be achieved by: (1) Reducing import
dependency and promoting production and exports by improving supply conditions
from EU, diversifying raw materials sourcing and improving resource efficiency,
including recycling, and finding alternative raw materials; and (2) Putting
Europe at the forefront in raw materials sectors and mitigating the related
negative environmental, social and health impacts.

·
A web-based marketplace for exchange between
stakeholders opened in September 2013, and the Commission launched an
Invitation for Commitments in October 2013. This resulted in 80 commitments,
and Action Groups are now being organised for implementation.

·
A Raw Materials EIP Conference was held in
December 2013, and a second conference is scheduled for November 2014.

The Raw Materials University Days

The Raw Materials
University Days is a
communication campaign launched in the framework of the EIP. It promotes
studies and career opportunities in the raw materials sector through a series
of events in Member States showing practical examples of prospects in raw
materials exploration, extraction, processing, recycling and substitution, and
covering a number of industrial sectors.

The High Level Group of the Smart Cities and Communities EIP,
endorsed by Council in March 2013, adopted its Strategic Implementation Plan
(SIP) in October 2013. The partnership aims to significantly improve citizens'
quality of life, to increase the competitiveness of Europe's industry and
innovative SMEs to provide a strong contribution to sustainability and the EU’s
20/20/20 energy and climate targets.

·
This will be achieved through the wide-reaching
roll out of integrated, scalable, sustainable Smart City solutions –
specifically in areas where energy production, distribution and use; mobility
and transport; and information and communication technologies are intimately
linked. This cross-sectorial focus is clearly present also in the High Level
and Sherpa groups of this EIP. The focus area 'Smart Cities' in Horizon 2020
was inspired by SIP and will support the large deployment of Smart Cities
solutions in a number of pilot cities and their further roll-out in other cities.

·
An Invitation for Commitments was issued in
February 2014 inviting all stakeholders to step forward and support the
objectives of the EIP by communicating and sharing their ideas and plans for
actions at the interface of energy, transport and ICT. Building on the SIP and
to give ideas for commitments an Operational Implementation Plan was published
along with the Invitation. An information and brokerage event was held in
February 2014.

·
the Smart Cities Stakeholder Platform is in place
with the aim of identifying and spreading information on technology solutions
and needs required by practitioners and providing information for policy
support. A Smart Cities and Communities EIP Launch
Conference was held in November 2013. This Platform
currently involves around 2700 members and will be instrumental in setting up 'Action
Clusters' following the close of the Invitation for Commitment.

The Commission committed from the outset to assess progress and
evaluate the overall performance of the EIP concept in 2013. To this end, it
set up an independent expert group under the chairmanship of Finland's ex-prime minister, Mr Esko Aho. The group delivered its report in February 2014
and presented it to Member States in the Council in May 2014.

·
The group concludes that the EIP is the right
approach to help enable future European economic growth
and welfare. The group recognises that the ambition of
the EIPs was rightfully set high, but recommends improvements in the execution
of the current EIPs and is calling for a second iteration of EIPs based on
modified targets and approach.

·
The group's core assessment is that the EIPs have been effective in integrating stakeholders, getting early
activities on their way, serving as an EU-wide observatory of practice in
innovation, and deepening the dialogue between policy-maker and innovator. The
implementation of the EIPs promises to deliver
significant outcomes, and the group concludes that there are sound reasons for
the EU to continue promoting the EIP approach, provided that the EIPs target
systemic innovation with a strong focus on diffusion of innovation.

·
However, the group also expresses concerns that
the process has suffered from a complex operational
model, hampered by a lack of a dedicated EIP structure and
divergence of views within the Commission, insufficient commitment from Member States and weakness to bring in new actors.

·
The group's recommendations imply improvements that can be made to the current EIPs and
significant changes to the way that future EIPs are launched and run. For
instance, on-going EIPs should seek a stronger focus on demand side measures
and innovation diffusion, e.g. public procurement, standard-setting,
regulation, incentives for adoption, replication and scaling-up of innovative
solutions, spreading of best practice. They should be more pro-active in
bringing in new actors who may have significant relevance for the development of future ecosystems and markets, and
they should intensify their ongoing work on indicators and monitoring and
evaluation frameworks. The Commission is already working with the five on-going
EIPs to see how additional steps could be taken to strengthen their
implementation.

·
According to the group's
recommendations, future EIPs should be launched only where there are clear
needs for systemic change in areas with great innovation potential, societal
need, business opportunity and need for partnering across Europe. They should
focus on mobilising demand, experimentation and diffusion; be proactive in
bringing in new actors; and have clear indicators for success. They should
continue as a core element of EU innovation policy, with the Competitiveness
Council being more involved and individual Commissioners continuing to chair
each EIP. The Commission is taking full account of the expert group's findings
and recommendations, and it invites the other partners in these partnerships to
also take good note and react to the conclusions of the group. The Commission's
views on the overall future of EIPs will need to be seen in the new policy
context that will develop over the next year.

Leveraging
our policies externally
1.
Key messages

Cooperating with
our external partners is essential to share resources in tackling common issues
and building on common priorities as well as to achieve excellence.

To this end, partnerships
between the EU and its Member States have been strengthened with regards to the
definition of common long term visions identifying priorities for cooperation
with third countries, including the identification of common research
infrastructures priorities.

In parallel, Europe is becoming more attractive by improving access and work conditions for foreign
researchers interested in carrying out their projects in the EU. Further steps
remain to be taken to make Europe even more attractive, for instance through
the full roll out of the European Research Area actions at Member States level.

2.
Progress so far
Commitment 30 – Put in place
integrated policies to attract global talent

"By 2012, the European
Union and its Member States should put into place integrated policies to ensure
that the best academics, researchers and innovators reside and work in Europe
and to attract a sufficient number of highly skilled third country nationals to
stay in Europe."

The European
Commission, in cooperation with Member States, has initiated a wide range of
initiatives to facilitate researchers’ mobility and increase the attractiveness
of the research profession in Europe. These include measures to facilitate
access to information on mobility (via the EURAXESS portals and EURAXESS
Links), the 'Scientific Visa' package facilitating administrative procedures
for third country researchers entering the European Community, Marie
Skłodowska-Curie actions and Destination Europe Events.

The MORE2 study[70] showed that the EU can be an attractive place in which to carry out
research. 72% of the non-EU researchers who had been to the EU would like to have stayed longer, and 93%
would recommend other colleagues to work in Europe as researchers. However, when asked to compare the research environment in the EU
with that outside the EU, the majority of researchers report that conditions
such as remuneration and career progression are generally better outside the
EU.

At national
level, measures include reforms to the higher education sector linked to the Bologna process. In addition, many countries have introduced national mobility schemes to
boost different types of researcher mobility (inward, outward and
cross-sectoral). Many of these schemes promote inward mobility from both EU and
non-EU countries providing financial incentives for early stage researchers.
The KOLUMB Programme (Poland), for example, awards fellowships to the best
young scholars to enable them to stay (from 6-12 months) at the world’s leading
research centres.  Non-financial incentives include measures promoting ‘dual careers’,
such as the Dual Career Network (France, Germany and Switzerland). Some countries
provide tax incentives to facilitate researchers’ mobility in Europe while
others such as Ireland offer special visas to attract researchers to engage in
research.

Fast-track
immigration is an important consideration for internationally mobile
researchers and is thus an important factor in helping attract the best global
talent to Europe. In 2013, the Commission adopted a
proposal for a directive on the conditions of entry and residence of
third-country nationals for the purposes of  research and studies. This
proposal aims to improve  the current ‘Scientific Visa Directive’ by setting
clearer time limits for national authorities to decide on applications, and
providing researchers with greater opportunities for mobility and access to the
labour market after their stay. The new rules on the Scientific Visa should take
effect as of 2016, following transposing by the Member States.

WELCOME Programme – Foundation for Polish Science

The overall objective of the WELCOME Programme is to engage
outstanding researchers from abroad in creating research teams in Poland and intensify the degree of international cooperation of Polish institutes and
universities. The Programme targets foreign researchers with at least a PhD
degree who either plan to work in Poland or have established their research
teams in Poland no earlier than five years prior to the cut-off date.

Polish researchers with at least a PhD degree, who have either have
stayed abroad for at least two years and intend to come back to Poland or have
already returned to Poland (within the two years prior to the cut-off date),
are also eligible to apply. The projects must be of at least three years’
envisaged duration.

EURAXESS Links
is a networking service offering European and non-European researchers
opportunities for international collaboration and career mobility. The EURAXESS
Links network was launched in 2006 and is successfully running in the following
countries: USA (2006), Japan (2008), China (2009), India (2010), four ASEAN
countries (Singapore in 2010 and Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia in 2012) and Brazil (2013). A North American hub now also covers Canada. EURAXESS Links
phase 2, which started in 2013, has enlarged the scope of the network by
supporting not only European researchers based in third countries, but also
non-European researchers wishing to move to Europe.

Over 20% of the
researchers funded by the Marie Curie Actions are non-European nationals, and
this strong international dimension will be maintained in the Marie
Skłodowska-Curie actions. Under Horizon 2020 the actions will contribute
to talent attraction by funding around 15,000 non-EU researchers - out of
65,000 - between 2014 and 2020 to start or pursue their careers in Europe. Experienced researchers of any nationality will be able to apply for a fully-funded
Fellowship in Europe of up to two years and special participation conditions will
be available for those who have previously left Europe..

Finally,
‘Destination Europe’ is an initiative of the European Union and its Member States to showcase Europe’s vibrant and exciting research and innovation culture.
Supported by the Strategic Forum for International Science and Technology Cooperation
(SFIC), ‘Destination Europe’ raises awareness of the attractiveness of Europe’s
research and innovation landscape and communicates the opportunities Europe has
to offer to researchers currently working in the USA. Six ‘Destination Europe’
events have been held in the USA since 2012, highlighting career and funding
opportunities available at national and EU level and more are scheduled for
2014 and 2015.

Commitment 31 – Propose common
EU/Member States priorities and approaches for scientific cooperation with
third countries

The European Union and its Member States must treat scientific
cooperation with third countries as an issue of common concern and develop
common approaches. This should contribute to global approaches and solutions to
societal challenges and to the establishment of a level-playing field (removing
barriers to market access, facilitating standardisation, IPR protection, access
to procurement etc.).

In 2012 together with the ERA Framework, the Commission will propose
common EU / Member States priorities in S&T as a basis for coordinated
positions or joint initiatives vis-à-vis third countries, building on the work
of the Strategic Forum for International Cooperation. In the meantime, the EU
and Member States should act in a concerted manner when engaging in S&T
agreements and activities with third countries. The potential scope for
"umbrella" agreements between the EU and Member States with third
countries will be explored."

The 2012 Communication on
enhancing and focusing EU international cooperation in research and innovation
was a major milestone in setting the overall scene. A strengthened partnership
between the Commission and the Member States is a central element of the new
strategy and considerable progress was made since, notably through:

·
The development and testing of methodologies in
the context of the Strategic Forum for International Science and Technology
Cooperation (SFIC) to identify common priorities and implement joint actions
through a number of geographic/thematic initiatives.

·
The start of the preparation of multi-annual
Roadmaps for key countries and regions (to be completed in autumn 2014) with
the involvement of Member States through the SFIC.

·
The pursuit of joint EU/Member States dialogues
with key world regions.

·
Support for policy dialogues and/or joint
research activities between EU/Member States and selected international partner
countries and regions under a series of FP7 BILAT, INCO-NET and ERA-NET
projects. Similar support will be pursued under Horizon 2020.

Progress has been made in the
development of common principles conducive to research cooperation at global
level through enhanced involvement of the EU and member States in global fora
such as the Global Research Council (GRC), the Belmont Forum, the OECD Global
Science Forum, etc.

Important steps
have been made towards establishing a level playing field for research and
innovation between the EU and its partners. The Union's funding programme for
research and innovation, Horizon 2020, is fully open to participation from
international partner countries and Europe’s markets are also the most open in
the world, offering investors access to a European internal market with
predictable and fair rules. Europe is thus striving for this openness to be
reciprocated by all of the Union's partner countries, including by ensuring
equivalent protection of IPR, removing barriers to trade, facilitating
standardisation and giving access to procurements. Negotiation by the European
Union of   Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) contributes to these efforts and to the
establishment of a level playing field with our trading partners, in particular
ensuring equivalent levels of protection of intellectual property rights. In
addition, efforts are being made in this sense in the R&I dialogues with
partner countries. The aim is to promote win-win situations so as to foster
international research and innovation opportunities.

Progress to varying degrees has been made in coordinating positions
among Member States and launching joint actions vis-à-vis third countries
through the initiatives launched by the Strategic Forum for International
Cooperation (SFIC). The SFIC has in particular developed initiatives
targeting China, Brazil, India and the USA. Such initiatives include
information events, networking of Member States science counsellors resulting
in strategic documents, the definition of Strategic Research and Innovation
Agendas highlighting main opportunities for joint EU/Member States /Associated Countries
activities with third countries and the creation of thematic groups (e.g.
thematic groups on water, health and energy research and innovation were agreed
with India).

SFIC
initiatives in the USA

The SFIC has developed a roadmap for its USA initiative with five main
headlines: 1) Enhancing the scale of cooperation building on existing large
scale initiatives at national and EU level; 2)
developing the innovation dimension; 3) improving the framework conditions for
cooperation, 4) information sharing and 5) the Destination Europe Initiative.

In parallel, major dialogues
of the EU and its Member States with world regions, have been progressing,
notably with the African Union, the CELAC, the Mediterranean region and the
Eastern Partnership.

EU-African
Union

·
At the November 2013 meeting of the EU-Africa
High Level Policy Dialogue on Science, Technology and Innovation, the
parties agreed to start working towards a long-term jointly funded and co-owned
research and innovation partnership with a first focus on food and nutrition
security and sustainable agriculture.

·
During 2014, a high level expert working group
will be tasked to develop a detailed roadmap concretely defining the scope and
outlining the different steps towards this new partnership. Funding for its
implementation will come from Horizon 2020.

·
Operational discussions on the envelopes
dedicated to STI in the EU development funding as well as Member States
programmes will look at the outcome the EU-Africa HLPD.

Country initiatives and regional
dialogues contribute to:

·
Mutual information among Member States on
bilateral international activities;

·
Exchange of best practices;

·
Concerted actions, either in the
information/communication domain or in actual joint research activities with
targeted countries or regions, and to the development of mutually coherent
cooperation policies;

·
Simplified engagement of targeted countries and
regions with Europe (at Member States and EU level);

·
Strengthening European voice in global fora and
organisations.

A study to analyse the best
practices for S&T Agreements and on the feasibility, advantages and
disadvantages of "Umbrella Agreements" was completed in 2014 and the SFIC
is currently considering possible follow-up actions to it.

Commitment 32 – Roll out global
research infrastructures

“The
European Union should step up its cooperation on the roll-out of the global research
infrastructures. By 2012, agreement should be reached with international
partners on the development of research infrastructures which owing to cost
and/or complexity, can only be developed on a global scale."

Global research
infrastructures are key elements in research and innovation policies but in
some cases their global nature, complexity, high costs and requirements in
terms of qualified staff make it impossible for one country or region to build
and operate them. The impact of closer cooperation is expected to improve the
coherence and coordination of global scientific efforts, becoming more
effective in planning, constructing and using global research infrastructures.

In 2013, the G8
Science Ministers agreed on proposing some new areas for collaboration among G8
members, including Global Research infrastructures and adopted a framework for
cooperation which describes the principles and reference terms.

A new mandate
for the Group of Senior Officials (GSO) was also approved, enabling them to
promote this framework and exchange information on potential future research
infrastructures that may present opportunities for international collaboration.

In the coming
years, the GSO will share information on national research infrastructures and
priorities, identifying areas of potential benefit that could be achieved
through sharing of best practices. A representative list of global research
infrastructures open to global cooperation of interest to new partners is to be
created.  The GSO has been invited by the G8 Science Ministers to report on
progress in 2015.[71]

Making
it happen       
1.
Key messages

Progress in
Europe and Member State’s innovation performance has been monitored through the
Innovation Union Scoreboard, peer review exercises and self-assessments
supported by the Commission, as well as in the framework of the integrated
economic coordination (‘European Semester’).

The use of such
monitoring in order to orient research and innovation policies requires a
longer timeframe, so as to take into account the length of policy cycles. This
explains why only few Member States have used the Self-Assessment Tool. 
Monitoring will be continued and improved through the Policy Support Facility
under Horizon 2020.

In order to keep
research and innovation policies relevant and up to date to face emerging
challenges, it is essential to facilitate the policy dialogue with all
stakeholders concerned. To this end the EU Innovation Convention was organised
in 2011 and 2014, so as to provide Commission service with relevant information
with regards to emerging issues and trends as well as with an opportunity to
discuss them with those who are most concerned.

2.
Progress so far
Commitment 33 – Member States
R&I Systems

“Member States are invited to carry out self-assessments based on
the policy features identified in Annex 1 of the IU and identify key challenges
and critical reforms as part of their National Reform Programmes. The
Commission will support this process through exchanges of best practice, peer
reviews and developing the evidence base. It will also apply them to its own
research and innovation initiatives. Progress will be monitored in the
framework of the integrated economic coordination ('European semester')."

Since the start
of FP7, the Commission was supporting up to six peer reviews per year, as an
in-kind contribution to national self-assessments. In October 2010,[72] the Innovation Union flagship reaffirmed the role of peer reviews
in support of reforming national R&I systems. In particular, it invited
Member States to carry out self-assessments using the Innovation Union
Self-Assessment Tool (SAT) to identify key challenges and critical reforms as
part of their National Reform Programmes.

Since 2012, the
Commission has also supported the Member States and regions in revisiting their
innovation and research strategies in order to align them to the smart
specialisation paradigm (see above under commitments 24 and 25).

Only a small
number of countries have requested to be peer reviewed over the last three
years (Belgium, Estonia, Denmark, Spain and Iceland). There is no evidence of
other countries having used the SAT tool and the Commission can only confirm
that Belgium, Estonia and Denmark have used the IU self-assessment tool in 2011
and 2012 and that Spain and Iceland are using it in 2014, as part of the peer
review of their R&I systems. Nevertheless, it is possible that more Member
States have used it, at least to a certain extent, when preparing their
National Reform Programmes.

The progress on
the achievement of R&I policy developments has been continuously monitored
in the framework of the integrated economic coordination ('European semester')
leading to the Commission proposals for Country Specific Recommendations (CSRs)
related to R&I. Commission services provided further, indirect support to
national self-assessments through annual ERAC mutual learning seminars bringing
together national policymakers to exchange information on selected policy
issues closely linked to the implementation of CSRs and about main policy
orientations in the field of R&I in the context of Europe 2020.

The new approach
of the national peer reviews and the introduction of SAT are considered
positive by Member States, bringing a systematic and structured methodology to
the process, in support of reforms of the national R&I systems. In parallel to the Danish peer review (2012) Commission services
commissioned an independent expert to prepare a short report 'SAT tool in ERAC
peer reviews- First Lessons' summarising the experience of the three SAT
pilots. The process has also proven to be very useful
for the national and regional authorities of the countries reviewed (not
limited to Member States), and also for the countries who participated as
peers. In particular, it contributed to the development of the new national
innovation strategies in Estonia and Denmark.

The Icelandic
and Spanish peer reviews are ongoing and the specific focus points have been
identified through the self-assessment tool by both countries. Concrete
recommendations on improvements to be made to the Icelandic R&I policy
(June 2014) and to the Spanish R&I policy (July 2014) should constitute the
outcome of the process. As an example, the Spanish authorities have announced
that they would examine very closely the outcome of the peer review exercise in
order to inspire national reforms of the Spanish R&I system.

Overall the
progress made in 2010-2014 on this commitment is delayed, as fewer Member
States than expected explicitly embarked in a full-scale review of their
R&I system based on the SAT. The reasons for the lack of success include
the perceived sensitivity of such an exercise, the visibility of its outcome
and the fact that it is usually linked to a major revision of the national
innovation policy/strategy (which only takes place every four or five years in
a given Member State).

Under Horizon
2020, a new tool, the Policy Support Facility (PSF), is being launched to
remedy this situation and offer support to a broader range of policy makers in
structuring their policy reforms. PSF will provide
access to relevant evidence-bases, expertise and evaluation results through
services with the aim of
improving the design and implementation of research and innovation reforms
linked to quality strategies, programmes and institutions. [73]. The PSF will
therefore offer, on a voluntary basis, dedicated support to national and
regional authorities when assessing their R&I systems in view of launching
reforms. This tool aims to make current peer reviews systematic and
professional, as well as to facilitate the decision of public authorities to
seek support when reviewing their R&I systems.

Commitment 34 – Develop an
Innovation Headline Indicator and monitor progress using Innovation Union
Scoreboard

"The Commission proposes to launch the necessary work for the
development of a new indicator measuring the share of fast-growing innovative
companies in the economy. This will require the full cooperation of Member States and international partners. Subject to these commitments, the Commission will
submit the necessary proposals and take urgent action to develop this indicator
within the next two years, working with the OECD, as appropriate, so that it
can become, over time, a new headline indicator allowing as part of the EU 2020
strategy to benchmark the EU's performance against its main trading partners.

Starting immediately, the Commission will monitor overall progress
on innovation performance using the Research and Innovation Union
scoreboard."

The new indicator of innovation output was developed at the request
of the European Council in order to benchmark national innovation policies and
monitor the EU's performance against its main trading partners.

A first proposal was presented to Member States in 2012, two years
after the start of the work and in line with the request by the Innovation
Union flagship initiative. Two additional workshops
with the Member States followed, and a dedicated inter-service
Task Force of the Commission services worked intensely on the indicator in
2013.

The Commission's Communication 'Measuring innovation output in Europe: towards a new indicator' was subsequently adopted in September 2013. A
comprehensive technical Staff Working Document accompanied the Communication.

By zooming in on innovation output, the new indicator of innovation
output complements the one on R&D intensity (3%) in the Europe 2020
strategy. The new indicator supports policy-makers in establishing new or
reinforced actions to remove bottlenecks preventing innovators from translating
ideas into successful products and services.

To measure innovation output, the Commission opted for using four
indicators from the outputs and firm activities types in the the Innovation
Union Scoreboard, grouped into three components (patents, employment in
knowledge-intensive activities (KIA), and competitiveness of
knowledge-intensive goods and services), and a new measure of employment in
fast-growing firms of innovative sectors.

The patents component takes into account inventions that exploit the
knowledge generated by investing in R&D and innovation, and which can be
transformed into successful technologies. Similarly, the indicators of the
intensity of employment of skilled labour, in KIA and in fast-growing firms, provide
an indication of the orientation of the economy towards the production of goods
and services with innovation added value. Finally, the trade flows associated
with those commodities measure their capacity to reach global markets.

The new indicator supports policy-makers, in the context of the
Europe 2020 strategy, in establishing new or reinforced actions to
remove bottlenecks preventing innovators from translating ideas into successful
products and services. Within the research and innovation strand of the
European Semester, the indicator will be used to monitor progress and
performance as regards innovation output.  It will also form an integral part
of the 'country profiles' which the Commission puts forward annually to measure
R&I performance in EU Member States and Associated Countries ('Research and
Innovation performance in EU Member States and Associated countries Innovation
Union progress at country level').

In the first
Semester of 2014 the indicator was brought to its full potential in line with
the areas identified in the Communication. Additionally, the indicator was
included in the IU Competitiveness Database hosted by the Commission.

Innovation output is wide-ranging and differs from sector to sector.
Measuring it entails quantifying the extent to which ideas for new products and
services, stemming from innovative sectors, carry an economic added value and
are capable of reaching the market.

The annual Innovation Union Scoreboard provides a comparative
assessment of the research and innovation performance of the EU Member States
and the relative strengths and weaknesses of their research and innovation
systems. It helps Member States assess areas in which they need to concentrate
their efforts in order to boost their innovation performance. Furthermore, it
gives a view on the performance of the Union in comparison to almost all its
global strategic trading partners.

The Innovation Union Scoreboard, following the methodology of the
previous editions and revised in 2010 with the adoption of the Innovation
Union, captures a total of 25 different indicators. Every two years the
Innovation Union Scoreboard is accompanied by a Regional Innovation Scoreboard.

In the latest IUS2014 edition, the last 25th indicator
was added 'Employment in fast-growing firm of innovative sectors'. This
indicator is part of the new Innovation Output Indicator.

The Innovation Union Scoreboard as well as the Regional Innovation
Scoreboard attract a large attention of policy makers across Europe and are
relatively widely commented upon by national and regional media. This not only
points out to the key results but it helps keep ongoing the debate on the
relevance of innovation for the economic growth and jobs. In January 2014, the
European Parliament stressed in its resolution on reindustrialisation of Europe that particular account should be taken of the annual Innovation Union Scoreboard.

Innovation Convention 2011 and
2014

According
to the Innovation Union Communication, the Commission has to facilitate debate
and exchanges of ideas and best practices focusing on the Innovation Union. To
further encourage this process of change and to promote an innovation mind-set,
the Commission is entrusted to convene an Innovation Convention to discuss the
state of the Innovation Union "involving Ministers, Members of the
European Parliament, business leaders, deans of universities and research
centres, bankers and venture capitalists, top researchers, innovators and
citizens of Europe".

Two
events have been organised since 2010 in Brussels, and the concept of a biennial
EU Innovation Convention is gaining brand recognition and widespread support.

The
first Innovation Convention took place in December 2011 and gathered some 1200 participants. It was widely recognised as the major innovation-related
event in Europe for the years to come, and was described as “a creative  get-together
of some of the world’s brightest people from across all sectors involved in
research, innovation and science”. The concept proved to work very well, being
a successful mix of main sessions, with an unusual combination of speakers,
parallel ‘fringe’ events, master classes, networking events, an exhibition and
an award ceremony. Sessions were designed to promote
interactivity and ensure variety, and were focused on how to create impact and
real 'stories'.

The second Innovation Convention was convened on 10 and 11 March
2014. Compared to the first edition, it doubled the number of participants
(2400) and presented an even richer programme, aiming at discussing innovation
in all its facets. The range of topics was broader, the use of digital
technologies (e.g. registration by barcode scan, paperfree event) and the
increase in the networking events number ensured a smoother visitor experience.
The inclusion of high profile, innovative award ceremonies (Women Innovators, Inducement
Prize On Vaccine Health and European Capital of Innovation) provided tangible
examples of success in different fields.

The messages conveyed by almost 80 high-level speakers and enthusiastically
supported by participants confirmed the consolidated support to
innovation-friendly policies by the general public. There was a strong, growing
demand for further actions aiming at promoting a true innovation culture. There
was also a clear demand for new approaches to be further explored, e.g.
inducement prizes, which help 'democratise innovation'.

Progress on
Innovation Union Commitments

The following
table intends to offer an overall summary of the progress in the implementation
of the Innovation Union commitments presented in this Staff Working Document.
It aims to highlight progress in the delivery of the actions that were put in
place to fulfil the commitments, as well as examples of how these actions are
being implemented.

Commitment || Actions delivered || Examples of implementation

1 - Put in place national strategies to train enough researchers || ü || - Most countries have put in place strategies; - Commission has put in place tools to favour this process. Remaining gaps (deadline 2011): - Some Member States still have to put in place such strategies. || - New innovative doctoral training opportunities available in some Member States; - EURAXESS available to researchers.

2 a - Test feasibility of independent university ranking || ü || - Feasibility of the ranking tested. || - U-Multirank launched in 2014; - 500 Higher Education Institutions participated in this ranking. Tool available for students and researchers to compare universities in new ways.

2 b - Create business-academia "Knowledge Alliances" || ü || - Knowledge Alliances piloted and scaled up in Erasmus+ . Follow-up: - +150 new Knowledge Alliances foreseen in the programming period 2014-2020. || - Higher Education Institutions and businesses took part in the first Knowledge Alliances. New Knowledge Alliances are being launched in 2014; - Results of the first Knowledge Alliances pilots available.

3 - Propose an integrated framework for e-skills || ü || - Grand coalition for digital jobs; - E-competence framework 3.0 released; - Roadmap for the promotion of ICT professionalism and e-leadership 2014-2020 released. || - E-competence framework adopted as a standard by some Member States.

4 - Propose an ERA framework and supporting measures || ü || - ERA Proposed in 2012; - ERA measures under implementation; - European Framework for Research Careers created; - Principles for Innovative doctoral training defined, disseminated, verified and supported; - Pan-European Pension fund, consortium established, funding foreseen in H2020. Remaining gaps (deadlines: proposal in 2012, measures to be in place by 2014): - Some Member States still have to align their systems to ERA principles; - Pan-European Pension fund expected to be operational in 2015. || - European Framework for Research Careers widely used for recruitment by universities, companies, etc.; - Joint Programming Initiatives.

5 - Construct the priority European Research Infrastructures || ü || - 56% under implementation. Remaining gaps - goal: 60% by 2015. || - 14 infrastructures provide services to their users.

6 - Simplify and focus future EU research and innovation programmes on Innovation Union || ü || - Horizon 2020 launched with focus on the Innovation Union. || - First calls of Horizon 2020 launched.

7 - Ensure stronger involvement of SME in future EU R&I programmes || ü || - SME instrument within Horizon 2020. || - SME instrument ready to be used in Horizon 2020.

8 - Strengthen the science base for policy making through JRC and create EFFLA || ü || - Better connections with JRC developed; - European Forum for Forward Looking Activities established. || - Work of the JRC and of EFFLA influencing Commission policy making and strategic programming.

9 - Set out EIT strategic agenda || ü || - Strategic Innovation Agenda set and under implementation; - New Knowledge and Innovation Communities  launched; - Activities of the EIT foundation expanded. || - 35 master courses with EIT label; - More than 1,000 students enrolled in EIT courses ; - More than 100 start-ups created; - More than 400 ideas incubated; - 90 new products and services launched.

10 - Put in place EU-level financial instruments to attract private finance || ü || - 'Access to Risk finance' under Horizon 2020; - First calls for expression of interest by financial intermediaries expected to take place in the third quarter of 2014. ||

11 - Ensure cross border operation of venture capital funds || ü || - The European Venture Capital Regulation entered into force in July 2013. || - At least 2 applications presented to MS.

12 - Strengthen cross border matching of innovative firms with investors || ü || - Expert group delivered recommendations to the Commission. || - These recommendations have been taken into account in the delivery of the financial instruments within Horizon 2020.

13 - Review State Aid Framework for R&D&I || ü || - State Aid Framework for R&D&I reviewed. || - State Aid Modernisation rules ready to be used as of July 2014.

14 - Deliver the EU Patent || ü || - 'Unitary patent package' agreed; - Machine translations available since 2013. Remaining gaps (deadline 2014): - Implementing rules to be defined by the Select Committee by the end of 2014; - 13 Member States have to ratify the Unitary Patent Court agreement for it to enter into force (2 ratifications so far); - Implementing rules for the Unitary Patent Court are being discussed within the Preparatory Committee. It is expected to start working in 2015. ||

15 - Screen the regulatory framework in key areas || ü || - Regulatory Screening methodology developed and applied to regulations relating to eco-innovation and European Innovation Partnerships. || - Methodology applied to water directive and regulation on raw materials.

16 - Speed-up and modernise standard-setting || ü || - Communication adopted in 2011. - Implementing regulation in 2012. || - Quicker (37%) standardisation process.

17 a - Set aside national procurement budgets for innovation || û || - Commitment not taken up by the Council. || - Some Member States have introduced measures to use public procurement as an instrument for innovation policy (e.g. Spain, Italy, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, etc.).

17 b - Set up an EU level support mechanism and facilitate joint procurement || ü || - Financial support to transnational cooperation provided by the Commission; - Revised Public Procurement directives facilitating the procurement of innovation adopted by Parliament and Council in 2014; - Guidance and awareness raising activities carried out by the Commission. Remaining gaps: - Member States to transpose directives. || - Joint procurement under FP7 calls.

18 - Present an eco-innovation action plan || ü || - Action Plan adopted in 2011. || - Strategic Implementation Plan agreed in 2012 and currently under implementation.

19 a - Establish a European Creative Industries Alliance - || ü || - European Creative Industries Alliance established in 2011. || -  More than €45 million mobilised on top of a €6.75 million EU support for the European Creative Industries Alliance; - Influence on the national schemes, including the National Creative Voucher scheme in Austria; - More than 3500 SMEs benefited from the activities of the European Creative Industries Alliance and an additional 2460 stakeholders participated in its activities.

19 b - Set up a European Design Leadership Board || ü || - European Design Leadership Board established. It delivered proposals on how to enhance the role of design in innovation. || - Staff Working Document 'Implementing an Action Plan for design driven innovation' published in 2013; - European Design Innovation Platform established; - European Design Innovation Initiative call.

20 - Promote open access; support smart research information services || ü || - Communication 'Towards better access to scientific information: boosting the benefits of public investments in research', including recommendations to Member States; - Open access in Horizon 2020; - Search tools developed. || - ODIN project.

21 - Facilitate collaborative research and knowledge transfer || ü || - Clear and easy participation rules for Horizon 2020; - Analysis of impact on innovation of consortium agreements carried out; - Guidance on the use of consortium agreements produced and integrated into the Horizon 2020 online grants manual; - Analysis of knowledge transfer and open innovation. || - European Technology Transfer Offices circle.

22 - Develop a European knowledge market for patents and licensing || ü || - Staff Working Document 'Towards enhanced patent valorisation for growth and jobs' published in 2012. || - Expert groups on Intellectual Property valuation and on Patent valorisation established; - Pilot project will deliver results at the end of 2014; - Results of the expert group on patent valorisation to be delivered.

23 - Safeguard against the use of IPRs for anti-competitive purposes || ü || - Guidelines on horizontal agreements adopted in 2010. || - These rules now apply to national competition authorities, the Commission; companies and national courts.

24 – 25 - Improve the use of Structural Funds for research and innovation || ü || - Research and Innovation strategies for Smart Specialisation introduced in the strategic planning of Member States and regions; - Smart specialisation strategies introduced as an ex-ante conditionality to access European Regional Development Fund funding for research, technological development and innovation; - Commission support to Member States an regions; - Smart Specialisation Platform launched in 2012. || - National and regional smart specialisation strategies defined in most Member States/regions.

26 - Launch a Social Innovation pilot; promote social innovation in European Social Fund || ü || - Social Innovation Europe platform launched in 2011; - Bigger role for social innovation in the European Social Fund. || - European Social Innovation Competition; - Support to networks of incubators for social innovation.

27 - Support a research programme on public sector and social innovation; pilot a European Public Sector Innovation Scoreboard || ü || - Social and public sector innovation included in Horizon 2020 topics; - European Public Sector Innovation Scoreboard piloted. || - European Prize for Innovation in Public; - Expert group on public sector innovation; - iCapital.

28 - Consult social partners on interaction between the knowledge economy and market || ü || - EU social partners contacted and first consultations took place in 2013. Follow-up: - Further consultations planned in 2014 and beyond. || - European Workplace Innovation Network.

29 - Pilot and present proposals for European Innovation Partnerships || ü || - European Innovation Partnerships launched, piloted and evaluated. || - More than 700 commitments for action; - Reference sites for sharing lessons and replicating transferable results; - Web-based marketplaces with well over 1000 registered users for each; - First results emerging: collections of good practices and toolkits for their replication, compilations of evidence on impacts etc.

30 - Put in place integrated policies to attract global talent || ü || - National measures being deployed to foster researchers' mobility; - Scientific Visa; - Marie Skłodowska Curie Actions; - Destination Europe Events. Remaining gaps: - New Scientific Visa to take effect in 2016, after transposition by Member States. || - EURAXESS and EURAXESS Links.

31 - Propose common EU / Member States priorities and approaches for scientific cooperation with third countries || ü || - Communication on enhancing and focusing EU international cooperation in research and innovation adopted in 2012. Remaining gaps: - On-going work of the Strategic Forum for International Cooperation to identify common priorities and implement joint actions. Roadmaps to be completed by the end of 2014; - Ongoing dialogues with third countries and world regions. || - Strategic Forum for International Cooperation initiatives targeting China, Brazil, India and the USA.

32 - Roll-out global research infrastructures || ü || - New framework for cooperation agreed in 2013 at G8 level. Remaining gaps (deadline 2012): - Report on list of existing infrastructures and priorities expected in 2015. ||

33 - Self-assess national research and innovation systems and identify challenges and reforms; || ü || - Commission support made available to Member States; - 5/28 Member States have requested peer reviewing; - Progress monitored through European Semester, leading to Country Specific Recommendations; - 3 countries confirmed use of Self-Assessment Tool. Follow-up: -  New tool launched under Horizon 2020. || - Peer reviews carried out for Belgium, Estonia, Denmark, Spain and Iceland.

34 – a - Develop an innovation headline indicator; || ü || - Communication 'Measuring innovation output in Europe: towards a new indicator' adopted in 2013. || - Indicator used for Country Specific Recommendations in 2014.

34 – b - monitor progress using Innovation Union Scoreboard || ü || - Innovation Union Scoreboard updated in 2010. || -  Innovation Union Scoreboard published yearly. Latest available issue in 2014.

[1] http://ec.europa.eu/euraxess/index.cfm/services/researchPolicies

[2] See Table 16, Researchers’
Report 2013

[3] http://ec.europa.eu/research/era/pdf/era\_progress\_report2013/era\_progress\_report2013.pdf

[4] European Charter for
Researchers and a Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers, available
at: http://ec.europa.eu/euraxess/index.cfm/rights/whatIsAResearcher

[5] Countries participating in
EURAXESS are EU Member States and Associated Countries to the Framework
Programme.

[6] http://ec.europa.eu/research/era/pdf/era\_progress\_report2013/era\_progress\_report2013.pdf

[7] http://ec.europa.eu/euraxess/pdf/research\_policies/Report\_of\_Mapping\_Exercise\_on\_Doctoral\_Training\_FINAL.pdf

[8] Members of the Stakeholder
Platform are: the Conference of European Schools for Advanced Engineering
Education and Research (CESAER), European Association of Research and
Technological Organisations (EARTO), the European University Association (EUA),
the League of European Research Universities (LERU), NordForsk and Science
Europe.

[9] The Committee is a strategic
policy advisory committee whose principal mission is to provide timely
strategic input to the Council, the Commission and Member States on research
and innovation issues that are relevant to the development of the European
Research Area. http://www.consilium.europa.eu/policies/era/erac?lang=en

[10] Towards Joint
Programming in Research COM(2008)468 Final, 14 July 2008

[11] Public-private
partnerships in Horizon 2020: a powerful tool to deliver on innovation and
growth in Europe COM(2013) 494 final, 10 July 2013

[12] http://ec.europa.eu/health/rare\_diseases/policy/index\_en.htm

[13] http://ec.europa.eu/research/health/medical-research/rare-diseases/irdirc\_en.html

[14] http://www.irdirc.org/

[15] MORE II Study

[16] See http://ec.europa.eu/research/infrastructures/index\_en.cfm?pg=esfri-national-roadmaps

[17] For the AEG Report
see: http://ec.europa.eu/research/infrastructures/pdf/jd-final-aegreport-23sept13.pdf

[18] SME Instrument on the
Horizon 2020 Participant Portal:   
http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/h2020-section/sme-instrument

[19] 70% of total cost.

[20] 70% of total cost as
a general rule.

[21] http://ec.europa.eu/research/innovation-union/index\_en.cfm?pg=former-expert-groups

[22] RSFF: http://www.eib.org/products/rsff

[23] RSI: http://www.eif.org/what\_we\_do/guarantees/RSI

[24] See http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/finance/cip-financial-instruments/index\_en.htm

[25] COSME provides a)
succeeding SMEG under CIP, a Loan Guarantee Facility (LGF) providing
counter-guarantees and other risk-sharing arrangements for guarantee schemes
(including co-guarantees where appropriate), plus direct guarantees and other
risk-sharing arrangements for other financial intermediaries; b) succeeding
GIF-2 under CIP, an Equity Facility for Growth (EGF) to enhance the supply of
risk capital.

[26] 2014-2015 'Access to
Risk Finance' work-programme:        
http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/data/ref/h2020/wp/2014\_2015/main/h2020-wp1415-finance\_en.pdf

[27] Horizon 2020 budget
breakdown:             
https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/sites/horizon2020/files/Factsheet\_budget\_H2020\_0.pdf

[28] There is no official
or widely accepted definition of 'midcaps' at present. In implementing the
Horizon 2020 financial instrument facilities and until an official definition
is agreed, 'midcaps' are deemed to be enterprises comprising 250 to 3000
employees (in full-time equivalents). They are divided into 'small midcaps' of
between 250 and 499 employees, and 'medium and large midcaps' of from 500 to
3000 employees.

[29] http://ec.europa.eu/internal\_market/investment/alternative\_investments/index\_en.htm#maincontentSec7

[30] http://www.esma.europa.eu/

[31] http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/about-startup-europe

[32] http://ec.europa.eu/competition/state\_aid/legislation/rdi\_mid\_term\_review\_en.pdf

[33] The Commission has
repeatedly urged Member States to speed up the ratification process of the UPC
Agreement. The conclusions of the European Council of 21 March 2014 also
confirmed the commitment to ratify the UPC Agreement and make the necessary
legal and administrative arrangements so that the EU patent regime can enter
into force by the end of 2014.  However, the requisite legal and administrative
arrangements ensuring the full functionality of the unitary patent regime might
ultimately take more time to be agreed by Member States.

[34] See http://ec.europa.eu/internal\_market/indprop/docs/patent/faqs/cost-comparison\_en.pdf

[35] The Member States participating in the
reinforced cooperation have been entrusted with giving the EPO the tasks
outlined in Article 9(1) of Regulation 1257/2012, including in particular the
granting and the administration of the unitary patent. Member States shall ensure the governance and
supervision of the activities related to these tasks. To that end, they shall set up a Select Committee of the Administrative Council
of the European Patent Organisation, which consist of the representatives of the participating Member States
and a representative of the Commission as an observer.

[36] Economic Cost-Benefit
Analysis of a Unified and Integrated European Patent Litigation System, Harhoff,
2009.

[37] http://www.epo.org/searching/free/patent-translate.html

[38] http://www.nordicinnovation.org/projects/public-procurement-and-innovation-within-the-nordic-health-sector/

[39] GÉANT is recognised
as the European communications commons that supports the rise of compute- and
data-intensive collaborative research and education through innovative
services, operational excellence and global reach. http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/desktop/en/opportunities/h2020/topics/2142-einfra-8-2014.html

[40] https://www.innovation-procurement.org

[41] http://ec.europa.eu/environment/ecoap/about-action-plan/index\_en.htm

[42] www.sat-research.at/hydroWEEE

[43] http://www.numix-ecoinnovation.eu/

[44] www.eciaplatform.eu

[45] 2010 European
Competitiveness Report

[46] Demos, 'Risky
business', 2011.  http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/riskybusiness

[47] www.designplatform.eu

[48] www.seeplatform.eu

[49] https://www.openaire.eu

[50] http://www.odin-project.eu

[51] For information on
the European
TTO CIRCLE
and its partners, please see http://www.jrc.ec.europa.eu/eu\_tto\_circle

[52] http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/innovation/policy/intellectual-property/index\_en.htm

[53] http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/policies/innovation/files/swd-2012-458\_en.pdf

[54] Regulation (EU) N°
1303/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 December 2013

[55] "Regional policy
for smart growth of SMEs", "The Smart Guide to Service
Innovation", "The Smart Guide to Innovation-Based Incubators
(IBI)", "Building Entrepreneurial Mindsets and Skills in the
EU", "Connecting Universities to Regional Growth: A Practical Guide",
"Guide to Broadband Investment", "Connecting Smart and
Sustainable Growth through Smart Specialisation", "Guide to Social
Innovation". Others are being developed on "Clusters",
"Science and Technological Parks", "Broadband investments",
"Synergies between Horion2020 and ESIF".

[56] http://s3platform.jrc.ec.europa.eu/home

[57] http://s3platform.jrc.ec.europa.eu/map

[58] A
film illustrates innovation at the crossroads of two different technology
domains, illustrates employment possibilities and entrepreneurship at its best:         
http://ec.europa.eu/regional\_policy/videos/level2.cfm?LAN=EN&idtheme=5

[59] http://ec.europa.eu/research/regions/documents/publications/ExpertReport-Universities\_and\_Smart\_Spec-WebPublication-A4.pdf

[60] http://www.socialinnovationeurope.eu

[61] http://ec.europa.eu/research/innovation-union/pdf/PSI\_EG.pdf#view=fit&pagemode=none

[62] http://www.oecd.org/innovation/inno/oslomanualguidelinesforcollectingandinterpretinginnovationdata3rdedition.htm

[63] http://ec.europa.eu/social

[64] Food & drink
industry and local and regional governments.

[65] Central government
administration, commerce sector, food and drink industry, education, leather
and tanning, local and regional governments, personal services and textile and
clothing.

[66] http://ec.europa.eu/research/innovation-union/pdf/Report\_from\_EG\_on\_Retail\_Sector\_Innovation\_A4\_FINAL\_2.pdf

[67] http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=784&langId=en

[68] http://www.europeancommerce.eu/eng/default.aspx

[69] Effat and
Copa-Cogeca.

[70] http://ec.europa.eu/euraxess/pdf/research\_policies/more2/Final%20report.pdf

[71] https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment\_data/file/206801/G8\_Science\_Meeting\_Statement\_12\_June\_2013.pdf

[72] In 2003 the European
Council invited Member States and the Commission to apply the Open Method of
Coordination in support of the 3% R&D investment target. As a result, 14
Member States were peer reviewed during the period 2004-2010. This experience
fed into the new cycle of the peer reviews using IU SAT.

[73] As stated in the
Communication ’Research and innovation as sources of renewed growth’, the
Commission will draw on the experience gained from the self-assessment tool in
the Innovation Union flagship initiative, and fully exploit the R&I
Observatory and the Policy Support Facility foreseen in Horizon 2020 to assist
Member States in the successful implementation of R&I reforms.”

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