Brussels, 18/12/2007 (Agence Europe) - On 14 December, the European Commission proposed a new strategy for harnessing the innovative potential of public spending in Europe in Research and Development (R&D). Such pre-commercial public procurement could tap unused potential especially in high tech areas, such as research into information and communication technologies for health care and medicine, the Commission says in a press release. Important technological innovations such as the internet protocol or the global positioning system (GPS) would, the Commission says, have been unthinkable without combined spending by the public sector and private companies. It believes that Europe could do substantially more is at the pre-commercial stage, where products and services are not yet ripe for the market, and where investment is particularly risk-prone, but is key for research breakthroughs. Thus, the Commission decided to advocate the procurement of public R&D spending already in this pre-commercial phase. The strategy presented will be the starting point for a debate with the 27 EU Member States on where and how to focus pre-commercial procurement of R&D. The Commission will follow-up in 2008 with concrete actions to encourage member states to launch procurement actions in key areas, such as health, transport, security, environment, ageing and energy efficiency. Cooperation between procurers would help to create economies of scale, especially important for driving innovation in fast moving, globalised markets such as information and communications technologies. (B.C.)