JTIs & PPPs: €22bn for innovation
The EU has announced a €22bn package of investment in health, transport and the environment in the form of public private partnerships. The funding, which will be made available over the next seven years, will come from several sources, including Horizon 2020, European industry and EU member states.
Announcing the new funding allocation at a press conference in Brussels, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science, said she hoped the funding would bring a range of benefits to the European citizens.
“The initiatives we are presenting today not only strengthen our economy, they are an investment in a better quality of life. These partnerships will deliver good jobs and major benefits to society, such as cleaner, greener aircraft, alternatives to fossil fuels and new treatments to combat the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance.”
The Commissioner outlined the challenges and competition the EU faces on the international stage, identifying the importance of investing in innovation today in order to stay ahead tomorrow.
“These investments are timely. Europe has maintained a leadership role in global innovation. At the same time, many competitors are investing faster than we are and they are thinking big.
“For example, while the EU has the world’s first commercial scale advanced bio-refinery for cellulosic biomass, there are reports suggesting that China plans to have nine such facilities by 2015. We need to bolster both public and private spending if we are to stay in, never mind ahead of, the game. To put it more bluntly: without new ideas, Europe is not going to get out of this crisis quickly, if at all,” Geoghegan-Quinn argued.
“Without new ideas, our businesses lose their competitive edge and investors will look elsewhere. Today’s announcement is a perfect demonstration of why the EU budget is a budget for growth.”
Public private partnerships
Funding for the innovation package will come from three main sources and will see public institutions and private businesses investing and working together in the form of public private partnerships.
“A proposed €8bn investment from Horizon 2020 will secure €10bn from industry and €4bn from EU member states. That represents a major increase in our level of ambition compared to the current public private partnerships we have. The contribution from the EU budget has more than doubled and the commitment from industry has increased even more. This is a vote of confidence in investing in research and innovation in Europe.”
The newly announced investment will be realised through PPPs, including Joint Technology Initiatives (JTIs). It’s hoped this will allow Europe to “boost its … competitiveness” and aid sectors which already support four million jobs.
Geoghegan-Quinn outlined the areas of research: “The five JTIs are: the Innovative Medicines Initiative to develop new antibiotics and other critical treatments; Clean Sky will help develop cleaner, quieter aircraft with 30% lower CO2 emissions; Bio-based Industries will seek to replace fossil fuels and fossil fuel based products with those from biological resources and waste; Fuel Cells and Hydrogen will find new ways to store and transport energy; and Electronic Components and Systems will boost Europe’s electronics manufacturing capabilities.
“The package also proposes to extend a PPP to pool research and innovation investments in Air Traffic Management – called SESAR – in support of the Single European Sky.”
The other co-operations will centre on public-public partnerships between the European Commission and EU member states. The areas of research collaboration will focus on “areas where the market alone has not been able to find a solution quickly,” Geoghegan-Quinn declared.
“The package includes four public-public partnerships … focusing on: support for high tech SMEs; new treatments against poverty related diseases; measurement technologies for industrial competitiveness; and solutions for the elderly and disabled to live safely in their homes.
“These partnerships are focused on areas where the market alone has not been able to find a solution quickly, often because the return on investment is not guaranteed. But solving these challenges will improve our quality of life, reduce the burden on our societies and create markets for exciting new products and services.”
Working together
Encouraging competitive businesses to work together is a tough accomplishment, an achievement recognised by Commissioner Geoghegan-Quinn.
“I applaud industry for committing to these initiatives. It is easy to say that you want to innovate, but then complain that the regulatory environment is too harsh, that the right skills don’t exist, or that research has become too expensive. These companies have decided that is not good enough – they are taking a bold step and investing and working with us.
“They have also – and this is one of the most interesting things about these partnerships – agreed to invest together with some of their biggest competitors. That is because they have realised that in this tough global environment, it’s sometimes better to work together with a competitor than not to work at all.
“Working together will enable us to tackle issues that no one company or country can deal with alone, and that is what is really at the core of what we are presenting here today.”
Máire Geoghegan-Quinn
