Open Day on Photonics 10 November 2010
The High-Level Expert Group on Key Enabling Technologies (KETs) will deliver policy recommendations to promote the industrial deployment of KETs to the European Commission DG Enterprise. To provide the opportunity for all stakeholders to give input into this process, the KETs Working Group on Photonics conducted an Open Day on November 10, 2010 in Brussels.
Photonics denotes a broad family of technologies that exploit fundamental light - matter interactions. Photonics can create light emitters, such as highly efficient LEDs or high power lasers, or light absorbers, such as highly efficient solar energy conversion systems for a more efficient energy economy, or diode sensor systems for infrared to x-ray detection. Photonic devices enable innovative applications and new business capacities in other markets. Photonics can contribute to solving Europe's Grand Societal Challenges - the pivotal target of the EU's 2020 strategy - and photonics will provide decisive competitive advantages in the future - but will those be European?
Today, more than 5.000 companies, most of them small and medium-size enterprises, manufacture photonics products in Europe. The sector employs almost 300 000 people directly and many more work for suppliers. The world market for photonics products amounted to € 270 billion in 2008, of which € 55 billion were produced in Europe. However, Europe needs a common industrial policy and it needs to attract more investment in photonics to remain competitive on the global scale.
The Open Day Photonics addressed a set of crucial questions:
• What must be done to tap the full potential of photonics in Europe?
• How can the European photonics industry hold or even increase its global market share?
• How should European governments and industry respond to the increasing global competition in photonics?
• How should the European Commission shape its industrial and research policies to achieve greater benefits for the European photonics industry?
The Photonics Open Day was an open consultation welcoming all stakeholders to gather the relevant information and opinions for a European industrial strategy on photonics. This included demand-side measures, R&D and manufacturing frameworks, public procurement, standardization, state aid, trade and other relevant policies needed to facilitate the industrial deployment of photonics in Europe.
Agenda 
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