Archive:Science, technology and digital society statistics introduced

Latest update of text: March 2014. Planned article update: March 2015.

Science is part of almost every aspect of our lives: at the flick of a switch, we have light; when we are ill, medicines help us get better; when we want to talk to a friend we just pick up the telephone or send a text message or e-mail. Europe has a long tradition of excellence in research and innovation, having been the birthplace of the industrial revolution. The European Union (EU) is a world leader in a range of cutting-edge industrial sectors — for example, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications or aerospace.

Research and development (R & D) is often considered as one of the driving forces behind growth and job creation. However, its influence extends well beyond the economic sphere, as it can potentially resolve environmental or international security threats, ensure safer food, or lead to the development of new medicines to fight illness and disease.

Information and communication technologies (ICT) affect people’s everyday lives in many ways, both at work and in the home, for example when communicating or buying online. EU policies range from regulating entire areas such as e-commerce to trying to protect an individual’s privacy.

Framework programmes: FP7 and Horizon 2020

While most research within the EU is funded on a national level by private and public sources, since their launch in 1984, the EU’s framework programmes for research have played a leading role in multidisciplinary research activities. The seventh framework programme for research and technological development (FP7) was the EU’s main instrument for funding research across Europe; it ran from 2007 to 2013. The budget was generally intended to finance grants to research actors all over Europe, usually through co-financing research, technological development and demonstration projects. FP7 was made up of four broad programmes — cooperation (collaborative research), ideas (the European Research Council), people (human potential) and capacities (research capacity). FP7 also foresaw direct research at the European Commission’s own research institute (the Joint Research Centre (JRC)), whose activities are divided into 17 policy agendas, with an emphasis on understanding the relationship between the environment and health, internal and external security, and support for Europe’s 2020 growth strategy.

Horizon 2020 is the framework programme for research and innovation for the period running from 2014 through to 2020, building upon FP7, the competitiveness and innovation framework programme (CIP) and the European institute of innovation and technology (EIT). By coupling research and innovation, Horizon 2020 emphasises excellent science, industrial leadership and tackling societal challenges. The goal is to ensure Europe produces world-class science, removes barriers to innovation and makes it easier for the public and private sectors to work together to deliver innovation. This framework programme will be complemented by further measures to complete and further develop the European Research Area. These measures will aim to break down barriers to create a genuine single market for knowledge, research and innovation. In December 2013, Regulation 1291/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing Horizon 2020 was adopted along with Council Regulation (Euratom) 1314/2013 on the research and training programme of the European Atomic Energy Community, together making up Horizon 2020. These were accompanied by further legislation concerning, for example:

the rules for participation;
the specific programme (setting out objectives and implementation rules, the duration of the programme and the means deemed necessary) for Horizon 2020;
and amendments concerning the European Institute of Innovation and Technology.

European Research Area

The European Research Area (ERA) was launched at the Lisbon European Council in March 2000. ERA aims to ensure open and transparent trade in scientific and technical skills, ideas and know-how. Europe’s research efforts are often described as being fragmented along national and institutional lines. Indeed, individual EU Member States may find it difficult to play a leading role in important areas of scientific and technological advance as research is increasingly complex, interdisciplinary and expensive.

The ERA was given new impetus in April 2007 with the European Commission’s Green paper on the European Research Area: new perspectives (COM(2007) 161 final). In May 2008, the ERA was re-launched as part of what has become known as the Ljubljana process, including specific initiatives for five different areas: researchers’ careers and mobility; research infrastructures; knowledge sharing; research programmes; and international science and technology cooperation. As a result, in the years through to 2020 the ERA will aim to establish a single European labour market for researchers, as well as single markets for knowledge and for innovative goods and services. Furthermore, the ERA should aim to: encourage trust and dialogue between society and the scientific and technological community; benefit from a strong publicly-supported research and technology base and world-class research infrastructures and capacities across Europe; provide for the joint design of research, education and innovation policies; address major challenges through strategic partnerships; and enable Europe to speak with one voice to its main international partners.

International cooperation forms an integral part of the EU’s scientific policy, which includes programmes to enhance Europe’s access to worldwide scientific expertise, attract top scientists to work in Europe, contribute to international responses to shared problems, and put research at the service of EU external and development policies. In December 2008, the Competitiveness Council adopted a 2020 vision for the ERA, which foresees the introduction of a ‘fifth freedom’ for the EU’s internal market — namely, the free circulation of researchers, knowledge and technology.

In July 2012, a Communication from the European Commission titled ‘A reinforced European Research Area Partnership for Excellence and Growth’ (COM(2012) 392 final) was released. This aims to promote a significant improvement in Europe’s research performance, stimulating growth and job creation. The measures in the Communication are designed to ensure the completion of the ERA by 2014, through various measures which need to be implemented by EU Member States, the European Commission and research organisations.

Innovation union

In October 2010, the European Commission launched a Europe 2020 flagship initiative, titled ‘Innovation union’ (COM(2010) 546 final) which sets out a strategic approach to a range of challenges like climate change, energy and food security, health and an ageing population. The proposals seek to use public sector intervention to stimulate the private sector and to remove bottlenecks which stop ideas reaching the market (such as access to finance, fragmented research systems and markets, under-use of public procurement for innovation, and speeding-up harmonised standards and technical specifications). In March 2013, the European Commission released the ‘State of the innovation union 2012 — accelerating change’ (COM(2013) 149 final), which reviewed progress made with respect to the 34 commitments made in the innovation union. This review concluded that more than 80 % of commitments were on track (at that time).

European Innovation Partnerships (EIPs) also form part of the innovation union and are designed to act as a framework to address major societal challenges, bringing together activities and policies from basic research through to market-oriented solutions — for more information, see the article on innovation statistics.

A digital agenda

A European Commission Communication titled ‘A digital agenda for Europe’ (COM(2010) 245 final) outlines policies and actions aimed at maximising the benefit of the digital era to all sections of society. The agenda outlines seven priority areas for action — see the article on information society for more detail.

International statistics

Official European statistics on science and technology provide a leading example of cooperation activities between international statistical organisations. In the domain of R & D statistics a joint survey produced by the OECD and Eurostat has been introduced, which is based on the collection of information following guidelines laid out in the Frascati manual. As regards human capital, Eurostat participated in the first two rounds (2006 and 2009) of a joint international survey — with the OECD and UNESCO aimed at developing internationally comparable indicators on the careers and mobility of doctorate (PhD) holders (CDH statistics). Within the domain of innovation statistics, Eurostat conducts a Community innovation survey, which is based on the guidelines laid out within the Oslo manual (jointly produced with other European Commission services and the OECD). In the framework of the International Patent Statistics Task Force (gathering the European Patent Office (EPO), the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the OECD, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the Japan Patent Office (JPO), the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) and the United States National Science Foundation (NSF)), Eurostat has worked towards the improvement of PATSTAT, a harmonised database held by EPO and covering EPO patent applications and USPTO patents granted.

The innovation scoreboard used for assessing innovation performance in the EU Member States has been reworked to improve international comparability and to include a number of research-oriented indicators in line with the purpose of monitoring the implementation of the innovation union; it has been renamed the innovation union scoreboard. This revised tool aims to provide a comparative assessment of the performance of the EU Member States, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey, as well as 10 other global competitors ^[1] and the relative strengths and weaknesses of their research and innovation systems. The 2014 scoreboard is based on 25 research and innovation-related indicators grouped into three main categories and eight innovation dimensions, covering:

enablers such as human resources, finance and support, open and excellent research systems;
activities of enterprises, such as investment, linkages and entrepreneurship, or intellectual assets; and
outputs, such as innovators and economic effects.

EU information society statistics come from a pair of surveys, one of which focuses on households and individual while the other focuses on enterprises. These annual surveys are used to benchmark ICT-driven developments, both by following developments for core variables over time and by looking in greater depth at other aspects at a specific point in time. While the surveys initially concentrated on access and connectivity issues, their scope has subsequently been extended to cover a variety of subjects (for example, e-government and e-commerce) and socioeconomic analysis, such as regional diversity, gender specificity, age, educational differences and the individual’s employment situation in the household survey, or an analysis by enterprise size (small, medium-sized and large enterprises) in the enterprise survey.

Further Eurostat information

Main tables

Database

Dedicated section

Science, technology and innovation

External links

Notes

↑ Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Japan, Russia, South Africa, South Korea and the United States.

[1] Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Japan, Russia, South Africa, South Korea and the United States.

[1]