Science: a Race without a Finish. the Position of Europe

This paper addresses the fundamentals of our knowledge-based society, with a particular view to the emerging knowledge initiatives in the European Union. After a discussion on the current R&D investment trends in Europe, several flaws in the European knowledge system and in the European Research Area (ERA) are highlighted. The need for a drastic improvement of frontier research (i.e. excellence-driven research) and for a better coordination of the great many research initiatives in the widening European Union is emphasized. A drastic change is needed in order to cope with the fragmentation and the sometimes low R&D intensity in the ERA. The paper concludes with a presentation of a recent meta-analysis which demonstrates the importance of public expenditures for education and research, based on a comparative analysis of 123 applied studies on the impact of government expenditures for knowledge investments on economic growth. 1. Europe and the Knowledge Revolution For the past centuries the socioeconomic history of Europe has been characterized by drastic transformations in its production structure, starting from the Industrial Revolution (mid nineteenth century) and followed by the Service Revolution (in the period after World War II) and the Information Revolution (as of the 1980s). Very recently, from the beginning of the twenty-first century onward, a new concept has become ́en vogue ́, namely the Knowledge Revolution. The latter concept refers to the emerging awareness that a knowledge-based economy is a critical condition for achieving a strategic and leading position in a competitive, globalizing world where innovation is the key to success. The European Union (EU) has recognized the importance of a strong R&D support to the evolving knowledge society in Europe, witness the acceptance of the Lisbon objectives (2000) for Europe as a global knowledge leader and of the Barcelona ta rge ts (2002) on the commitment of a drastic increase of R&D intensity (toward 3 percent of GNP in Europe). Such ambitious policy statements and plans were needed, since most countries in Europe do not have a strong 2 R&D system . The following weaknesses 3 have been recently noticed in particular . 1 Peter Nijkamp is Professor in regional and urban economics and in economic geography at the Free University, Amsterdam. His main research interests cover plan evaluation, multicriteria analysis, regional and urban planning, transport systems analysis, mathematical modelling, technological innovation, and resource management. In the past years he has focused his research in particular on quantitative methods for policy analysis, as well as on behavioural analysis of economic agents. He has a broad expertise in the area of public policy, services planning, infrastructure management and environmental protection. In all these fields he has published many books and numerous articles. He is member of editorial boards of more than 20 journals. He has been Visiting Professor in many universities all over the world. He is past president of the European Regional Science Association and of the Regional Science Association International. He is also Fellow of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences, and is immediate past vice-president of this organisation. Since June 2002 he serves as president of the Governing Board of the Netherlands Research Council (NWO). President NOW, President EuroHORCs 2 Gronbaek, D.J.V.H., A European Research Council: an idea whose time has come?, Science and Public Policy, December 2003, pp. 1-14; Ministry of Economic Affairs, Science, Technology and Innovation in the Netherlands, The Hague, 2004 3 Why Investing More in R&D at the European Union Level?, Mimeographed Note, EC, Brussels, 2005; OECD, Basic Science and Technology Statistics, Paris, 2001; LERU, Growth, Research-intensive Universities and the European Research Council, February 2005 (http://www.leru.org)