Intelligent Europe

The Knowledge or Intelligent Europe strategy had been announced as the Lisbon Strategy 2000, relaunched in 2005. The Knowledge Europe strategy is now to be reconsidered as the Future Europe 2020, addressing principal shortcomings of the Lisbon strategy's, with a view to build Europe as the global knowledge innovative Community, where knowledge and intelligence is the engine for sustainable growth. The key part of the EU 2020 vision is viewed as a geniune European Knowledge Area, sustained by a world-class transport, energy, communication, and knowledge infrastructure.
Stakeholders
European Parliament; The Council of Ministers, Consilium; European Council of the heads of member states; Council of Europe
European Commission: President of EC; Commissioners of Institutional Relations and Communication Strategy; Enterprise and Industry; Justice, Freedom and Security; Administrative Affairs, Audit and Anti-Fraud; Transport; Information Society and Media; Environment; Economic and Monetary Affairs; Maritime affairs and fisheries; Science and Research; Enlargement; Taxation and Customs Union; Competition; Agriculture and Rural Development; External Relations and European Neighbourhood Policy; Internal Market and Services; Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities; Energy; Consumer Protection; Multilingualism; Health; Trade; Financial Programming and Budget; Regional Policy; Development and Humanitarian Aid; Education, Training, Culture and Youth
Member States: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom
Political Parties; Banking Institutions; Public-Service Corporations; Business Groups; Telecom Corporations; Universities; Research Institutes,…
Rationale

Vision and science reveal what the world could be. The vision of the Europe of Knowledge, Knowledge-Intensive Society, Knowledge Base of Europe and Technological Know How was set up in the development plan of EU as the Lisbon Strategy: "to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010". Unlike the industrial economies, driven by traditional physical machines and mechanisms, the knowledge economy is to be propelled with the digitized global knowledge and advanced information and communication technologies ICT, as the Broadband Internet and World Wide Web with knowledge processing machines and semantic systems.
The i2010 strategy, the EU policy framework for the information society, has underlined three key objectives:
1. to create a single European Information Space of digital economy, high-bandwidth communications and content and digital services;

2. to strengthen investment and innovation in ICT research (R&D instruments, FP 7, e-infrastructures, European Technology Platform, e-invoicing framework);

3. to support e-inclusion and quality life of citizens (ageing, independent living and inclusion, eAccessibility, broadband gap or digital divide, inclusive eGovernment, digital literacy, culture, e-public services as e-government and e-Health, and intelligent transport).
To achieve those ends, there are activities and innovations as regulation, funding for research and pilot projects, the internet of things and smart tags, the internet economy, digital convergence, promotion activities and partnerships with stakeholders
The Europe's Future Knowledge Society Scenarios
The Europe's Future Knowledge Society is viewed in different ways by different EU Presidencies. If the Cyprus EU Presidency could envison the Future Europe as an Intelligent Europe of smart knowledge communities, the Sweden presidency sees it as a Green Knowledge Society. Its practical plan consists in ten key policy areas, which were chosen from the analysis of interviews and a creative workshop with leading thinkers . The ten policy areas, shown below, form an overall ICT policy framework for the EU over the next five to ten years:
1. The knowledge economy to create new knowledge assets: driver of future wealth;
2. The knowledge society: participation for all;
3. Green ICT: support for an eco-efficient economy;
4. Next generation infrastructure: balancing investment with competition;
5. Soft infrastructure: investing in social capital;
6. SMEs and ICT: supporting Europe’s small enterprises;
7. A single information market: enabling cohesion and growth;
8. Revolutionising eGovernment: rethinking delivery of public services;
9. Online trust: a safe and secure digital world;
10. Clear leadership: rethinking the EU’s policy making process
Building Knowledge Europe
The European Commission has a triple of EU framework programmes for building Knowledge Europe:
the Structural Funds,
the Competitiveness Innovation Framework Program (CIP),
the EU Seventh Research Framework Programme 2007-2013 (FP7).
The big funding triad is supposed to increase Europe’s growth and competitiveness, recognising that knowledge is Europe’s greatest resource. The programmes place strong emphasis on research, development and innovation relevant to the needs of European industry, to help it compete internationally, and develop its role as a world leader in the key economic sectors.
The EU Structural Funds covers a trilpe of funds:
European Regional Development Fund; Cohesion Fund; European Social Fund (ESF).
Being totally worth € 308 billion, the Funds are assigned to the following triple strategic objectives of regional policy:
82% for the “Convergence” in the following areas, research and technological development (RTD), innovation and entrepreneurship, information society, environment, risk prevention, tourism, culture, transport, energy, education, health;
16% go for innovation, sustainable development, better accessibility and training projects under the “Regional Competitiveness and Employment”;
2.5% go for cross-border, transnational and interregional cooperation under the “European Territorial Cooperation”.
The Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP) is designed to support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), co-financing innovation activities (including eco-innovation).
It encourages a better take-up and use of information and communication technologies and helps develop the information knowledge society, promoting the increased use of renewable energies and energy efficiency.
The CIP runs from 2007 to 2013 with an overall budget of € 3621 million, being divided into three operational programmes:
The Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programme (EIP);
The Information Communication Technologies Policy Support Programme (ICT-PSP);
The Intelligent Energy Europe Programme (IEE).
The FP 7 programme is supposed to provide support for the best in European investigator-driven research, with the creation of an autonomous funding agency, European Research Council.
Subtitled “Building the European research area of knowledge for growth”, FP7 is designed to respond to the competitiveness and employment needs of the EU. The Commission proposeed to double the FP7 budget compared with FP6, rising to EUR 67.8] billion over the period 2007-2013. The FP7 has been organised in four specific programmes.
Cooperation
Objective: to gain European leadership in key areas through co-operation of industry and research institutions. Support will be given to research activities carried out in trans-national cooperation, from collaborative projects and networks to the coordination of national research programmes.
The Cooperation programme is organised into sub-programmes which will be operationally autonomous and at the same time demonstrate coherence and consistency, and allow for joint, cross-thematic approaches to research subjects of common interest. Nine themes have been identified:
• Health
• Food, agriculture and biotechnology
• Information and communication technologies
• Nanosciences and nanotechnologies, materials and new production technologies
• Energy
• Environment (including climate change)
• Transport (including aeronautics)
• Socio-economic sciences and the humanities
• Security and Space
In addition, two themes are covered by the Euratom Framework Programme:
• Fusion energy research
• Nuclear fission and radiation protection.
Ideas
Objective: To strengthen the excellence of our science base by fostering competition at European level. An autonomous European Research Council is created to as the fundament of the European Rsearch Area. It is funded to support “frontier research” carried out by research teams, either individually or in partnership, competing at European level, in all scientific and technological fields, including engineering, socio-economic sciences and the humanities.
People
Objective: To reinforce career prospects and mobility for the researchers activities supporting individual researchers, referred to as “Marie Curie” actions, will be reinforced with the aim of strengthening the human potential of European research through support to training, mobility and the development of European research careers.
Capacities
Objective: To develop research capacities, so that the European science community has the best possible capacities at its service. Activities will be supported to enhance research and innovation capacity throughout Europe: research infrastructures; regional research driven clusters; stimulating the research potential in the EU’s “convergence” regions; clustering regional actors in research to develop “regions of knowledge”; research for and by SMEs; “science in society” issues; “horizontal” activities of international co-operation.
Knowledge Europe Pillars
Knowledge and intelligence generated from investment in the European Research Area of education, research, development and innovation is a key diver for a European Knowledge Society. The future of Europe is a future of globally networked intelligence of personal minds, communities and distributed digital intelligence of information and communication technologies, embodied as the Future Internet of things, knowledge and content and real semantic Web .
European Smart City Programs
A smart city is understood as a city capable to innovatively employ information and communication technology distributed intelligence, individual minds and collective intelligence of communities to sustain an intelligent urban environment and development. The European Union has a rich history of supporting "Smart Cities" projects, such as European Digital Cities (FP4), InfoCities, IntelCity roadmap (FP5), and Intelligent Cities (FP6), as well as a world class centers as URENIO (led by Prof. Nicos Komninos).
The concepts of smart city involve the Future Internet technologies and services; cities as common open platfoms for novel internet/web-based services transforming human lives, business, and society; user-driven open innovation methodologies and ecosystems, such as Living Labs and Open Platforms for Digital Cities.
The Future EU 2020 Strategy
The aim of this consultation paper is to seek the views on the Future Europe . As the key priorities are considered:
Creating value by basing growth on knowledge, strengthening education and research, innovation and creativity, producing innovative products, services and processes;
Empowering people in inclusive societies;
Creating a competitive, connected, greener and smarter economy, harnessing the advances od the digital economy and single market;
Convergence and integration, advanced interdependence between Member States, governments, policies, and interdependence at global level;
Setting EU2020 in a global context of smarter planet.
The Spring European Council in 2010 should set the EU2020 strategy on its course for the next 5 years basing on a Commission proposal to be tabled in early 2010.

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