Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-07-04-Speech-2-214"
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"en.20060704.29.2-214"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, this debate runs on seamlessly from the debate that we have just had on the automobile industry as an example of restructuring.
We all agreed that structural change has been with us since a long way back and will continue to be with us for a long time. I also got the impression that most people here in this House were of the opinion that the right answer to structural change is innovation. Structural change takes place when a product or a process is no longer modern enough. The answer cannot be to take it lying down and to leave it up to others; instead we must face up to this competition through innovation.
The Commission would like to get to the point at which the capacity and readiness for innovation are understood as a leading political, social and economic principle of the European Union. This is not merely a technical exercise; innovation is in fact something that first has to be mentally understood, something that has to be willed. This also requires the readiness to accept change. We have put innovation at the centre of our strategy for growth and employment for good reason: because a non-protectionist economic order, one that is based on freedom, can only succeed by means of innovation.
It needs a society that supports and promotes innovation, and it needs a political framework that promotes innovation. That is precisely what we are doing, and on two levels. We are doing this on the level of the Member States, and it is very important that there is a wide-ranging emphasis on innovation policies and initiatives in the national reform programmes for the implementation of the Lisbon Strategy, and that the Commission accords the highest priority to innovation in its reassessment of the Lisbon Strategy this year.
On the level of the European Union we have recently set out a great number of initiatives, all of them aimed at promoting innovation: from the subsidy rules that as was specifically requested earlier in the debate are specifically directed towards innovation, through to the general financial tools for setting up new and innovative businesses, all the way to means to enhance the use of intellectual property and to develop capacities for research and development.
We are striving for an innovation policy that forms an integrated whole. I am glad to be able to tell you that, at the Commission’s meeting with the Finnish Presidency yesterday in order to prepare the programme for the Presidency in the second half of 2006, innovation was at the top of the agenda, and was treated as the most important theme. I am very confident that this Finnish Presidency is especially suited to advancing the theme of innovation, because Finland is a prime example of how an innovation policy that is willed, focused and intelligently carried out can achieve the extensive modernisation of a country, making it competitive on an international level.
I always think that we should learn from the good examples of others, and in this case we should do just that."@en1
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