NCPA - Daily Policy Digest - In High-Tech Innovation, The Eu Is No U.S.

NATIONAL CENTER FOR POLICY ANALYSIS
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In High-Tech Innovation, The Eu Is No U.S.

It would be a mistake to compare the collection of 15 countries that make up the European Union to a sort of United States of Europe. There are too many important structural differences -- and those differences have hindered technological progress there compared to such advances in the U.S.

For example, the U.S. is a single market, but the EU is not, with each country regarding the others as technological competitors -- meaning that there are duplications in governments' funding of innovative projects.

Research funds don't flow as they do in the U.S. to a relatively small number of academic powerhouses, but are scattered among hundreds of lesser universities.

In Italy, Austria, Spain and elsewhere, European regulations make it hard for researchers to commercialize their work.

Political infighting also makes it hard to create a Europe-wide stock market to finance technology start-ups -- and a Europe-wide patent has been held up for years because governments can't agree on what language the patent should be filed in.

Overall, the U.S. government spends about $60 billion annually in research and development.

EU governments spend about $45 billion. But experts estimate that about 20 percent of that is wasted due to one nation's project duplicating another's.

Source: Bob Davis, "The Outlook: Why Europe Trails the U.S. in High-Tech Innovation," Wall Street Journal, April 1, 2002

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