Research, development RTD, innovation: reinforcing economic cohesion and industrial competitiveness

The Parliament adopted the resolution drafted by Mr. de Lassus Saint Geniès (ERA, F) supporting increasing competitiveness through more investments in R&D. The resolution emphasises the importance of EU R&D policy helping the regions. It calls on the Commission, when allocating certain types of funding to innovation under the RTD framework programme, to observe award criteria weighted towards the less favoured regions. It also calls for the following : - the training and mobility of scientists and technologists between less and more prosperous regions to be improved; - the Commission and the Member States to establish procedures for stimulating the supply of risk capital to SMEs in the less favoured regions referred to in the Treaty of Amsterdam in support of technological development; - the Commission to propose relevant procedures to evaluate the feasibility thresholds above which the spirit of innovation and competitiveness can be developed and to use evaluation criteria defined in agreement with the scientific and economic community and submitted to Parliament and the Council for a decision; - the Commission to assess periodically and systematically - at the very least at the end of each framework programme and prior to the proposal for a new framework programme - progress achieved regarding the actual participation of groups from less favoured regions in the framework programme and regarding the benefits derived by socio-economic agents in these regions from the actions and the results of the framework programme; - the Commission to draw up precise indicators of the state of RTD and innovation applicable to the regions in order to improve the monitoring and assessment of the impact of structural interventions in this area.�