The December 2008 European Council called for a European Plan for Innovation. The European Commission (DG Enterprise and Industry – Innovation Policy Development unit) is now working on the preparation of such Plan.
We started by presenting an assessment of achievements made under the Broad Based Innovation Strategy (Commission Communication “Reviewing Community innovation policy in a changing world”), accompanied by reviews of the Lead Market Initiative, innovation in services, financing innovation in SMEs and the effectiveness of innovation support measures.

On the basis of this assessment, we  launched a multiple consultation process with the wider public on the directions and possible measures to be included in a European plan for innovation.

1) a Business Panel on future European innovation policy has been established to provide inputs from a business perspective on priorities for future EU innovation policy. From 7 July to 31 August 2009, the panel was holding an open online consultation on its ideas and proposals through the Innovation Unlimited blog. The results have been published here as a report, and the full discussion is reproduced here.

2) the official consultation process has been launched, where we ask you to answer 12 key questions by November 16th.

However, we feel the urge to maintain a more informal and less structured communication with citizens and stakeholders. We were impressed by the quality and creativity of the comments made on the Innovation Unlimited blog and also by the potential for this form of communication to improve our policy making.

This is why, in the unit for Innovation Policy, we decided to keep the blog going, and we are now using it to communicate and get contributions in an informal and continuous way on the debate on European innovation policy.

For terms of use of the blog, see here.