Source: EURLEX
Language: en
Format: md

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# 92001E0661

**WRITTEN QUESTION E-0661/01 by Philip Bushill-Matthews (PPE-DE) to the Commission. Lisbon European Council and investment.** 
  
*Official Journal 318 E , 13/11/2001 P. 0096 - 0097*

  

WRITTEN QUESTION E-0661/01

by Philip Bushill-Matthews (PPE-DE) to the Commission

(6 March 2001)

Subject: Lisbon European Council and investment

The 2000 Lisbon European Council called on the Council and the Commission, together with the Member States where appropriate to improve the environment for private research investment, R & D partnerships and high technology start-ups, by using tax policies, venture capital and EIB support. What progress, particularly in terms of concrete examples, has been made since the Lisbon summit in this area?

Answer given by Mr Busquin on behalf of the Commission

(4 May 2001)

Since the Lisbon European Council, a series of measures have been taken at European level to stimulate private investment in research and technological innovation.

The Community has stepped up its schemes on networking researchers and on venture capital to fund innovation in order to boost start-ups and expansion of high-technology businesses. The framework programme for research activities for 2002-2006(1), as proposed by the Commission on 21 February 2001, stresses that the networks of excellence and integrated projects will necessarily entail activities relating to dissemination, transfer and take-up of the knowledge produced. Designed as large-scale activities and conducted preferably as public/private partnerships, integrated projects will lead to substantial mobilisation of funds around precisely defined objectives.

To promote better use of tax measures for research and innovation, the Commission will soon be starting an exercise to identify best practice in this field.

In its communication for the Stockholm European Council on 23/24 March 2001 entitled Realising the European Union's potential: consolidating and extending the Lisbon Strategy, the Commission announced its plans to revise the rules on State aid for research and development by the end of 2001.

On a proposal from the Commission, on 20 December 2000 the Council adopted the multiannual programme for enterprise and entrepreneurship, particularly SMEs (2001-2005), which gives high priority to financial instruments, particularly in the form of venture capital to help to start up innovative new businesses.

The European Investment Bank (EIB) has launched its Innovation 2000 Initiative with the objective of strengthening research funding and venture capital. The EIB has doubled the reserve set aside to cover capital investment to 2 billion until 2003.

Finally, three potential fields for collaboration and joint action between the Commission and the EIB in the fields of research and innovation have been identified: research infrastructure, near-market industrial research and development, and venture capital to fund start-ups and business incubators. The objective is to create a framework for collaboration to capitalise more fully on the complementary strengths and synergies between these two institutions.

(1) COM(2001) 94 final.

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