Wrap-up of Workshop 2 - Innovation and Competitiveness Nils Schneekloth ESPON Seminar Espoo, Finland, 15.11.2006

Policy context Starting point: Lisbon and Gothenborg Strategy Which are the main factors to achieve the given targets Lisbon performance in European area has not been satisfactory yet Territorial key factors are not always visible in the documents How do we develop a strategy for whole Europe and tailor it to the needs of the European regions How to interface the derived results with policy makers? How do we manage long term political and spatial processes?

Factors of innovation and competitiveness and their political challenges The development of the information society and ICT policies have the potential to improve accessibility of peripheral regions significantly Potential to give peripheral regions business opportunities and access to services Disadvantaged regions of the information society tend to fall further behind rather than catching up Several policies have been suggested to improve accessibility of ICT services and their use don’t succeed for several reasons Success factors are availability and provision of services and education but it is to a large extent influenced by the attitudes of stakeholders in a region If one switches to a policy of furthering regions with specific ICT potential, can one still speak of cohesion policies or is it a switch to efficiency oriented policies Spatial arrangements shouldn’t hinder efficient investments How to redistribute possible gains if one still wants to pursue a policy of territorial cohesion?

Factors of innovation and competitiveness and their political challenges When dealing with competitiveness and growth one should not neglect sustainability aspect When pursuing the cohesion goal it is suggested to give every region and citizen the same opportunities than aiming at equalization in the strict sense Sustainability in this sense needs multiple qualitative indicators for the evaluation It is recommended to exploit local identities and attitudes and further their development and enable them to reach their full potentials Time dimension, transformation processes take usually a long time

Factors of innovation and competitiveness and their political challenges Globalisation plays a big role in the development of regional industries Identification of a economic centre in the northern hemisphere that is surrounded by regions that are developing faster Only few neighbouring countries that can be regarded as integrated partners Need for a focused geopolitical strategy of the EU and a vision of a future Europe in the world So far we see a lack of vision for the relationships with the new faster growing regions in the world Development of policy options that can be communicated to policy makers

Factors of innovation and competitiveness and their political challenges 3 main groups of factors for economic success have been identified Traditional economic factors Modern, milieu and quality of life related factors Governance National policies play in general bigger roles for regional economic growth than region specific circumstances Sector structure of a region can show the history and future challenges in the future transformation of the region How to deal with spatially differentiated impacts of national economic policies?

Factors of innovation and competitiveness and their political challenges How to favour investments without creating social and fiscal dumping Enhancement of productivity with an appropriate distribution of the gains in wages, taxes and profits Are redistribution schemes suitable when economic trends favour divergence? Need for an identification of regional strengths, weakness and dynamics, either by case studies or regional economic models

Recommendations for further research in ESPON II Improve data availability in ICT on regional scale Improve time series to study long term developments Improve spatial scope to widen the geographic area of the analysis Network of national experts that can comment on the qualitative spatial indicators Co-operation with neighbouring countries Development of contacts with DG Trade and DG Relex How to integrate the goals of the Lisbon and Gothenborg process? Development and application of a policy of eco-efficiency Opening projects to integrate various aspects