Improving Governance in European Innovation Policy - Implications for innovation policies in Europe

Participants stated a clear need of increasing efficiency of innovation policy activities and reducing complexity of the existing programme landscape in support of innovation at regional, national and European level.

The workshop organised on November 26-27, 2009 in Brussels aimed to discuss the rationales, challenges and opportunities to improve governance for European innovation policies and to develop recommendations to the European Commission for EU innovation policy making.

Better EU innovation policy governance will contribute to a more comprehensive mobilisation of innovation policy makers and other innovation actors, to faster and more flexible, thematically targeted and clearly timed decision-making and coordination processes at operational level thus resulting in a more innovation friendly business environment through better synchronisation and coordination of innovation related activities.

Based on the analysis of the existing European innovation policy governance system, participants emphasised in all discussions a clear need of increasing efficiency of innovation policy activities and reducing complexity of the existing programme landscape in support of innovation at regional, national and European level:

• to set innovation policy high on the European agenda
• to set priorities addressing societal challenges
• to simplify the existing programme landscape
• to simplify access of beneficiaries (in particular SMEs) to the programmes and to address their needs
• to coordinate activities at EU, national and regional level

The output paper and presentations of participants can be downloaded from the INNO-Views workshop pages.