What are the priorities for boosting EU competitiveness and innovation?

The European Commission has launched a public consultation enabling anyone to give its opinion on how EU money should be spent to boost EU competitiveness and innovation. This will help designing the successor of the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme 2007-2013 (CIP).

The current CIP runs from 2007 until 2013 and encompasses three different operational programmes:

    * the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programme (EIP), which aims at supporting small and medium enterprises and innovation. Among other things, the EIP focuses on the ways of providing better access to finance for small and medium enterprises, and supports eco-innovation projects;
    * the Information Communication Technologies Policy Support Programme (ICT-PSP), which aims at stimulating innovative and interoperable services, such as the funding of pilot projects, research into the uptake of digital services, etc;
    * the Intelligent Energy Europe Programme (IEE) which has energy and climate change objectives. For instance, this programme encourages investment in sustainable energies, as well as the development of training in energy efficiency in the building sector.

These programmes have already helped thousands of small and medium enterprises by financing their efforts in the fields of eco-innovation, energy efficiency and use of renewable energies.

A public consultation has started in order to give the stakeholders an opportunity to express their opinions on the evolution of EU funding for innovation and competitiveness. More specifically, the target groups of this consultation are :
 
    * enterprises that are beneficiaries of the CIP;
    * business and innovation support providers;
    * national, regional and local public administrations;
    * financial organizations.

The public consultation started on 8 November 2010 and will close on 4 February 2011. The survey is available online.