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EU overview
24.02.2007, 22:00
Enterprise and industry policy aim to ensure all businesses compete and trade on fair and equal terms, that Europe is an attractive place to invest and work, and that growth is in knowledge-based and innovative industries. This requires a sound industrial fabric across the EU, so that – without being interventionist – the policy takes specific needs and characteristics of individual sectors, such as the food, fashion and design, and IT industries, into account, makes sure that strategically important industries, such as aerospace, defence, mechanical engineering, chemicals, the life sciences and biotechnology, can flourish, and promotes innovation, entrepreneurship and healthy SMEs, since small businesses are the backbone of EU enterprise.
Remaining internationally competitive
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.
Technology and innovation are key factors in creating an environment for industrial enterprise. The EU funds large amounts of research, finances entrepreneurship, encourages 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.
The EU does not take a protectionist or inward-looking approach to meeting these challenges. The basic premise is that sheltering industry from change would only postpone the inevitable and make it costlier and more painful in the long run. What the EU does is to try to anticipate structural change, create a climate which promotes the innovation for meeting the challenge and - where adjustment is needed - then cushion the impact as much as realistically possible for both employer and employee.
Enterprise policy emphasises the need to integrate policies as diverse as trade, research, the internal market, employment and training, the information society, regional development and taxation – without overlooking the importance of the environment, so that they boost the use of knowledge and innovation across EU industry as a whole. The overriding goals are to remove obstacles to competition, prevent new barriers going up in member states, and limit and improve regulation in the interests of job creation and growth.
It is not a case of growth at all costs, however. The EU is committed to policies which produce sustainable growth and is encouraging enterprise to play its own part through the European Alliance for Corporate Social Responsibility. This encourages enterprises to commit themselves to sustainable development, economic growth and job creation through the attention they pay to skills development, more rational use of natural resources, better innovation performance, poverty reduction, and greater respect for human rights.