The three lines of action that Europe cannot forget

The coming changing of the guard at the White House, hailed by Trump as a revival of America's vocation for greatness in a multipolar world disoriented by the rumblings of wars, climatic surprises and lurking pandemics, should also prompt a redemption in Europe, after at least two decades in which the productivity and growth gap between the two sides of the Atlantic has widened.

Since 2000, the US has grown real disposable income per capita twice as fast as Europe.

In detached but firm tones, the Draghi Report of last September - about which too little is said - invites all European stakeholders (politicians, trade unionists, entrepreneurs, managers, technicians, simple citizens) to take note of a difficult challenge, but not lost at the outset, on the future of Europe's competitiveness. Let us remember: it is a continent of 440 million consumers and 23 million businesses that generates almost 20 % of global GDP (compared to 17 % for China and 24 % for the USA: World Bank figures), leading the charts in terms of life expectancy, low infant mortality, less inequality between rich and poor, and trade openness towards the rest of the world. Let us dwell on three lines of action on which the Report insists.

The first line of action aims at bridging the persistent gap between research and innovation whereby only one third of patents registered by European universities and research institutions find commercial exploitation. The reason for this is mainly due to the scarce presence on the capital market of venture capital funds capable of turning 'inventors' into 'innovators'. It is of little use to multiply countless start-ups, perhaps useful to boast the innovative activism of the institutions promoting them, if investors specialised in scale-up, i.e. the dimensional growth of the enterprise on the goods and services market, do not intervene. Of the global use of venture capital funds, Europe accounts for 5% against 52% in the USA and 40% in China. On average in Europe, with large differences between member countries, companies continue to face bureaucratic hurdles in meeting project participation requirements, including the now well-known IPCEIs that aim to build cross-border collaborations on important fields of common interest. Grounding the many potentialities of long-sighted innovation is a real 'existential challenge' and avoiding a 'slow agony' to use the language dear to Draghi.

Still on the subject of the innovation gap, the Report emphasises Europe's weakness in the domain of emerging technologies that will drive future growth, e.g. High Performance Computing, from which developments in Artificial Intelligence and Cloud Computing will inevitably pass. The European Research and Innovation Fund has a decent budget (EUR 100 billion), but it is dispersed among too many objectives and is not sufficiently focused on cutting-edge (disruptive) technologies.