"If Europe’s enterprises want to be in the front row in the future, they should start investing in knowledge right now, and governments should implement adequate measures to support them in this process". It was the rather preoccupied comment by Janez Potoènik, EU research commissioner, to the data resulting from the research named "Key figures of science, technology and innovation (2007)". The research was carried out by the Executive. The report pointed out that "in Europe, the intensity of the activities relating to research and development, expressed as percentage of the gross domestic product, and destined to this sector, has been steady since mid nineties", while its most important competitors, and in particular Japan, China and South Korea, "managed to remarkably intensify their R&D efforts, with the consequence that, today, on a world level, the distribution of knowledge is much more uniform with respect to the past". At the same time, in this field, the gap with the United States "remained constant in the last few years". Above all, the experts underlined the modest innovation activity rate of EU’s enterprises. Moreover, the small and medium-sized enterprises are significantly behind. In particular, Europe is behind in the high technology industrial sector. (to be continued)
