7.8 Enterprise, Information Society and Science and Research

(I) Introduction

There are currently three Directorates-General dealing with policies relating, in varying degrees, to business, competitiveness and the Single Market. They are:

The Enterprise and Industry DG: this DG's objectives include improving the EU's competitiveness, fostering enterprise (including SMEs), encouraging innovation and supporting deregulation.
The Information Society and the Media DG: this DG also has laudable aims. The promotion of IT was a key theme at the Lisbon summit (March 2000).
The Science and Research DG and supporting organisations. The EU has a considerable history of promoting research in an attempt to compete with the US and Japan in technological developments.

(II) Enterprise and the Information Society

The industrial policy of the EU has had two main prongs.

Firstly, there were policies to help older, declining industries such as textiles, shipbuilding and steel restructure in ways so as to minimise disruption. These policies are now largely obsolete.
Secondly, there are policies to assist in the development and spread of new technologies that provide the foundation for future economic growth and the promotion of innovation.

The EU is an active promoter of IT, telecoms and the "Information Society". The Commission's first landmark paper on telecommunications liberalisation was in 1987. The latest changes to the regulatory framework were effective from July 2003. The principal aims of the new regulatory framework were:

To reduce the regulatory burden on companies providing information services.
To ensure that all customers have the right to a set of basic services at affordable prices.
To stimulate competition further.

At the Feira summit (June 2000) EU leaders backed the "eEurope 2002 (sic) Action Plan" as part of the Lisbon strategy, which aimed to develop a dynamic environment for e-business through the widespread availability of broadband access at competitive prices along with a secure information infrastructure. The successor "eEurope 2005 Action Plan" was launched at the Seville summit (June 2002).

Several initiatives have been launched since 2000 to make high-speed broadband available to households, to expand e-business services for companies and to put services online. The current initiative, known as ¡2010 (sic) focuses on the development of broadband access for the years to 2010.

The EU's emphasis on enterprise and encouragement for SMEs is laudable but, arguably, fated to be compromised by its penchant for extra regulations. These extra regulations can seem daunting. For example, the new system for dealing with some chemicals known as REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals) has heavy compliance costs and has been widely criticized.

(III) Science and Research

Although the Community has been heavily involved in fundamental and applied research in the nuclear industry (starting with Euratom) since the 1950s, its involvement in industrial research began only in the 1980s with the growing realisation that the EC was falling behind Japan and the US - and even South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. It was encouraged by the relative success of European cooperation in such ventures as Ariane (a French-designed rocket launcher for commercial satellites), Airbus (in the aerospace sector) and JET (in the thermo-nuclear fusion sector).

The first European Strategic Programme for Information Technology (ESPRIT I) was a 5-year programme (1984-88) designed to help Europe respond to the challenge of foreign competition in IT. It was followed by the second Esprit programme (ESPRIT II) which covered the years 1989-1993. Subsequently ESPRIT became part of the EU's general Research Framework Programmes.

The Commission has also supported a series of "Research Framework Programmes" for general research. The Framework Programmes that have run to date are:

1^st Framework: 1984-87.
2^nd Framework: 1987-91.
3^rd Framework: 1991-94.
4^th Framework: 1994-98. It incorporated ESPRIT for the first time.
5^th Framework: 1998-2002.
6^th Framework Programme for Research and Technical Development (FP6): 2002-06. It concentrated on seven key areas: genomics and biotechnology for health, information society technologies, nanotechnologies and nanosciences, aeronautics and space, food safety, sustainable development, and economic and social sciences.
7^th Framework (FP7): 2007-13. The framework programmes are based on the principle of creating a new European Research Council, as discussed at the Lisbon "dotcom" summit of March 2000, designed to make Europe's research more efficient. FP7 also funds projects carried out by the EU's Joint Research Centre (JRC).

The EU is leading the Galileo satellite project, a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), for the next generation of satellite global positioning systems. It is being developed by the EU with the European Space Agency (which is not an EU institution).

RL, February 2007