Overview                                                       

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As part of Europe’s effort to enhance the economic strength of the region by becoming a strong knowledge based society, focus in placed on competiveness and eco-innovation.  To that end, the EU aims to achieve better coherence and synergy of its policies. 

With its Communication on innovation ‘Putting knowledge into practice: A broad-based innovation strategy for the EU’ adopted in 2006 (COM(2006)502), the Commission pointed the way to accompany industry-led and society-driven innovation with competitiveness and public policies at all levels as a core element of the renewed Lisbon strategy for growth and jobs. It includes the implementation of the actions foreseen in the ‘More Research and Innovation - Investing for Growth and Employment: A Common Approach’ Communication (COM(2005)0488).

The Communication highlights ten priority actions in a roadmap for action at national and European levels. The Commission intends, for instance, to encourage the emergence of “lead markets” where public authorities facilitate industry-led innovation by creating the framework for a successful market uptake of innovative products and services by focusing in areas such as e-health, internal security, eco-innovation and eco-construction.

As part of the Lisbon strategy, the Commission has adapted its regulatory framework on State aids to enable Member States to develop new measures in favour of innovation, taking into account the identified flaws in the European innovation landscape. Please look at the following document: ‘Community Framework for State Aid for Research, Development and Innovation’. Other key policy documents adopted by the Commission in the context of the action plan set out in its Communications ‘Putting knowledge into practice: A broad-based innovation strategy for the EU’ and ‘More Research and Innovation – Investing for Growth and Employment: A Common Approach’ can be found here.

Also worthy to point out is the CIP programme , running from 2007 until 2013, bringing together already existing measures within the EU relating to competiveness and innovation, into one comprehensive programme to boost the competitiveness and productivity of European businesses with a special focus on SMEs, representing around 90% of GDP and two thirds of jobs in the EU. It also supports efforts in the fields of eco-innovation and sustainable energy. The total budget for the 7 year programme comes to €3.6 billion.

There are three sub-programmes under the CIP:

The Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programme, bringing together activities in the areas of entrepreneurship, SMEs, access to finance, industrial competitiveness and innovation; 

The ICT Policy Support Programme, aiming to promote the fast adoption of information and communication technologies (ICTs);

The Intelligent Energy-Europe Programme, bringing together actions which aim to speed up the uptake and promotion of energy efficiency and to increase investments and awareness-raising of renewable energy sources. 

The Competitiveness and Innovation Programme is paired with the FP7 research programme. Eligible countries are members of the EEA, candidate countries, countries of the western Balkans, and, under certain conditions, to countries participating in the EU’s neighbourhood policy.

Pre-commercial public procurement (PCPP)

PCPP is a tool to bridge the innovation gap through a public demand pull.

By acting as technologically demanding first buyers, public procurers can drive innovation from the demand side. In addition to improving the quality and effectiveness of public services this can help creating opportunities for companies to take international leadership in new markets.

At EC level, it is DG INFSO that has taken the lead in the promotion of PCPP.

EC publication: Pre-commercial procurement: Driving innovation to ensure high quality public services in Europe

Homepage of PCPP maintainted at DG INFSO

There are funding opportunties related to PCPP available at EC level:

• The call for proposals under the FP7 programme for coordination and support actions on PCP closed on 1 April 2009. We are now entering the period of evaluating the received proposals. Funded proposals are expected to start in the 2nd half of 2009. Information about selected proposals will be published in due course on the CORDIS PCP website under "projects".
• Under the CIP programme, public authorities can also submit proposals for networking on PCP under the form of "thematic networks". The current CIP call for proposals is open until 2 June 2009.
• The Regions For Economic Change (RFEC) programme offers opportunities for regional public authorities to submit proposals for networking on pre-commercial procurement. More specifically pre-commercial procurement was included for the first time as one of the topics for networking proposals under the theme 2.2 "bringing innovative ideas to the market more quickly" of the RFEC call that closed end of January 2009. The evaluation of this call is still ongoing.