Strasbourg, 14/01/2003 (Agence Europe) - When presenting the Spring Report, that the Commission had just adopted for the attention of the European Council of 21 March, in the framework of the debate on the Greek Presidency (see p.5) European Commission President Romano Prodi chose to place special emphasis on the need for Europe to invest more in knowledge, deliberately dramatising the problem of the brain-drain to the United States. Mr. Prodi illustrated the major outlines of the Commission's communication entitled "Opting for growth: knowledge, innovation and employment in a society based on cohesion", adopted at the same time as the Pedro Solbes Report on implementing the broad economic policy guidelines (we shall return to these two documents) and that on the general principles of a new European strategy for employment presented by Anna Diamantopoulou (see p. 14).
The Lisbon Strategy for economic, social and environmental renewal by the end of the decade continues to be the path to follow for an enlarged Union, he affirmed, stressing that "the Spring European Council must demonstrate that it can pursue the process faced with the double challenge of enlargement, and especially the deterioration in the economic situation".
Yet, he observes, whereas certain Member States attain and even exceed the goals of the Lisbon Strategy, progress has not been uniform, which shows that more co-ordination at Community level is necessary to "encourage all Member States to achieve the objectives which are in their on interests, as well as in the interest of all the members of the Union".
But it is the object of making Europe an economy based on knowledge and innovation that most concerns the President of the European Commission. "So many extraordinary things are happening in the whole world", the dynamism of international markets is such that our position risks being increasingly "eroded" if we do not do more for research and innovation, Romano Prodi shouted, recalling that Europe continues to have many fewer researchers than the United States and Japan. "The others are running fast, we are lagging behind", he warned, considering that that was a "problem of survival for the future of our economy".
Our largest companies carry out 40% of their research outside the Union, Prodi recalled, considering that, under these conditions it was not wrong to dramatise the situation. The Commission will launch an action plan for R&D, and the legislative and administrative framework in which our undertakings exercise their activities will need looking at, said Romano Prodi. He then exclaimed: "We can achieve all the Lisbon Processes possible, but if Europe does not become attractive to young talent, we shall lose our economic and scientific leadership"
The Americans use enormous "human resources" for research and innovation, whereas "our youth" go to the United States and do not return, and yet in the majority of cases the "Chinese and Asians" who also go to the United States go back to their country, Professor Prodi hammered home. "If we continue like this, we are finished", he said. He then repeated: in Europe, we need very high level centres of excellence, otherwise, in future we shall never have "the best brains here". The European social model also depends on that, the Commission President warned.
EUROPE will return to Wednesday afternoon's debate on the semester of the Greek Presidency and on the Commission documents for the Spring Summit. In particular, the "Spring Report" states that the European Council of next March "will have to set deadlines and allocate responsibilities to guarantee that all measures at EU level are adopted before the European Parliament elections of June 2004, including those that still need submitting to the Commission before June."