The explanation of why the EU is lacking behind might be the slow economy but it might also
be the small amount of investments in R&D and thereby also the relatively low amount of
researchers.
9. The government can support R&D in different ways
Member states’ effort has in most recent years concentrated on the following areas:
- New governance structures for universities and advanced learning institutions.
- Reward of excellence in allocation of research funds.
- Reconsidering the cost split between users and suppliers of further education partly to
finance more basic research (UK, GER). - Streamlining the number of institutions in light of the need for specialization and the
globalised character of research. - Serious efforts to improve quality of education, in some countries also the follow up to
disappointing test scores in international and national evaluations. - Restructuring the tax systems in order to attract researchers and to make it more
favourable to research.
However, most evaluations suggest there is still some way to go on these fronts with uneven
progress in various countries and various areas of education and research.
In addition to these policy fronts, more focus may be attached to:
- The international dimension: The globalised character of advanced research and the large
spill-over of positive effects between relatively many, smaller countries suggest more
division of work, removing barriers to mobility for highly skilled and research workers
and more co-funding of projects, for example over the EU-budget. - Ensuring that overall economic and institutional incentives are geared towards expanding
the supply of innovative workers for both the private and public sector, and for the latter
that work and pay conditions in critical areas are sufficiently attractive to match offers
from private firms and US-institutions.
Bear in mind that such efforts have to be subjected to important horizontal constraints and
guidelines:
- The EU government’s fiscal positions need to be improved, leaving some countries with
little or no overall room for aggregate spending increases and with considerable budget
gains from reforms needed just to plug the present and future deficits. - Tailoring policies to individual country challenges, which differ widely in terms of
challenges.