Europe misses mark in science

Europe is at risk of missing the boat of scientific progress. The EU is moving forward way too slowly in the field of science to catch up to the leaders, the United States and Japan, while China is fast gaining ground after years of lethargy. The goals of the failed Lisbon Agenda have been postponed for no less than a decade, from 2010 to 2020. In this context, there is a growing concern that budget cuts will end up holding back research activity still heavily dependent on government funding.

This is the scenario that the European Commission confirmed earlier this month when it released its innovation ranking. The data reflects the insufficient nature of the budgetary effort: while the target was to spend three percent of GDP on R&D, the EU average remains at 2.01 percent. Spain came in 19th out of 27 on the 2011 scoreboard, among the moderate innovators, down a notch from last year.

"The world is global and so is investment. Knowledge comes from research funds"

The EU foresees R&S spending to be one part public for two parts private

As we began to see in 2010, the financial crisis is having an impact on research and scientific activity. Although there is a difference between the two, the bottom line for the EU as a whole is that "it's not catching up to the United States, and China is getting closer and closer," say sources from the European Commission.

In light of this situation, the rectors of the League of European Research Universities have called for substantial long-term investment in basic research as the foundation of its future competitiveness. They also warn that frontier research cannot be seen as "a linear progression of basic science into new products," but rather a process that requires "patience, persistence and investment."

It has taken Europe a decade to move R&D spending from 1.86 to two percent of bloc-wide GDP; an embarrassing rate compared to China, which in just four years has made the leap from 1.3 to 1.5 percent of its flourishing GDP. Japan's R&D expenditures amount to 3.4 percent of its GDP, while the United States spends 2.7 percent of its wealth on innovation.

The three-percent target set by the 2000 Lisbon Agenda for the end of the first decade of the century remains a distant dream amid a panorama of considerable differences between countries. Germany, France, Sweden and Denmark surpass the European average by far, according to data from Eurostat and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Spain has made some headway in the last few years, but remains at the tail end of the pack.

As 45 percent of all R&D funding is public in the European Union, government policies are key to any change. The same is not the case in the United States, where state funding only accounts for 33 percent. In Japan and South Korea, the government picks up less than 30 percent of the tab.

European universities defend their role in the field of research, especially the basic variety. "The world is global, and so is investment. Knowledge must be generated by investing in research," says the vice rector of research from the University of Barcelona, Jordi Alberch. "Universities are where future researchers are bred. Basic research produces the knowledge required to understand, for instance, how different materials, organisms and cells work, which can eventually lead to patents. And European universities play an important role in this."

Japan beats the entire EU in the number of total patents registered at the European Office per million inhabitants, according to Eurostat. It racks up 161 for every million inhabitants whereas the European Union can lay claim to only 116.

"The number of patents a country has registered is significant, but a patent doesn't necessarily mean that the invention is being exploited," says Juan Mulet, director of COTEC, a foundation for technological innovation that includes over 80 companies and institutions across Spain. "Almost 80 percent of the patents are based on basic research, but there are many that never get exploited," says Mulet. The director of COTEC also points out that the European goal of spending three percent of its GDP on R&D spending "is very difficult to accomplish in the short term, but we must keep on making progress."

What is the relationship between investment in research, patents and economic growth? Luis Sanz, director of the Institute of Public Goods and Policies at Spain's Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), has this to say: "In general, there is a relationship between expenditure in R&D, especially from the private sector, and patents. This can be seen by comparing these two figures in certain countries. Investment in R&D favors economic growth and recovery." Patents are "a way of measuring a country's potential for innovation," says this expert.

The goal of the European commissioner for research and innovation, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, is for that three percent to be made up of one-percent public and two-percent private funding. The commissioner appreciates the fact that Spain, which spent 1.38 percent of its GDP on R&D in 2009, has committed to reaching the target of three percent, in a Union that ranges from countries that don't even spend one percent to others that are at around four percent. Geoghegan-Quinn has even cited Spain as an example for other EU countries to follow.

But the fact is, Spanish promises and Geoghegan-Quinn's praise don't objectively translate into visible results in the ranking. Looking for a silver lining, the sources stress that this year's results are based on parameters from 2009 and that in future rankings, Spain will improve its modest 19th position.

According to the Commission, an effective R&D strategy is the only way for Europe to achieve growth that generates quality employment, immune to the ups and downs of globalization. Now that the dream hatched in Lisbon of making the EU the global leader in the knowledge-based economy by 2010 has failed, the Commission and the 27 member countries have come up with a new slogan: Union of Innovation. It falls within the so-called 2020 Strategy, aimed at achieving a growth that is smart, sustainable and inclusive.

In fact, Brussels is preparing to launch a pilot partnership on healthy aging. The overreaching target is "to enable EU citizens to lead healthy, active and independent lives while aging, and to increase the healthy lifespan by two years by 2020." It doesn't look at it as the additional two years one must now work in Spain to access a full pension, but rather a way to boost "the competitiveness of the markets for innovative products and services, responding to the aging challenge at both an EU and global level, thus creating new opportunities for businesses."