Businesses and Local Authorities
Creating conditions that enable EU businesses to compete on equal terms with the rest of the world includes protecting their intellectual and industrial property against counterfeiting and piracy. It means keeping costly red tape to the minimum compatible with high energy, environmental and social standards. Another element in the equation is deregulation: adequate and non-discriminatory access at the best price possible to key business support services, such as communications, transport and utilities.
In order to improve competitiveness, the EU funds large amounts of research into technology and innovation through the 7th Framework Programme for research and development, and the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP). More than €50 billion is available under FP7 between 2007 and 2013, and there is €3.6 billion under the CIP over the same period. The focus of the CIP will be small and medium-sized enterprises (SME's) wanting to innovate, especially in the areas of energy efficiency and renewable energy sources, environmental technologies, and a better use of information and communication technology (ICT).
The EU also promotes public-private partnerships in order to make the most of what the private and public sectors have to offer and organises technological platforms. It also plans to set up a European Technology Institute from 2008 to bring together the three points of the knowledge triangle - research, education and innovation, which together are the underpinnings of a dynamic economy. The Institute will work through knowledge and innovation centres (KICs), which will be partnerships between the private sector, the research community and universities.