The Central and Eastern European EU members (EU-CEE) have undergone an impressive process of economic catch-up since the early 2000s, but the previously successful model of taking over labour-intensive production steps as an \u2018extended workbench\u2019 for Western companies is increasingly nearing its limits and the countries need a new industrial policy worthy of the name to exit the middle-income trap, according to a report published by the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (wiiw).<\/p>\n
Such a European-coordinated industrial policy, tailored to the specific needs and strengths of each country, can only succeed with technological innovation, the wiiw report furthers.<\/p>\n
The study recommends that the EU-CEE member states take a number of steps:\u00a0<\/p>\n
– create\u00a0a long-term innovation strategy<\/strong>\u00a0and a national agency to coordinate all innovation efforts;\u00a0<\/p>\n – make better use of EU funds and increase national funding for research and development;\u00a0<\/p>\n – improve administration and public institutions;\u00a0<\/p>\n – promote local suppliers, introduce targeted incentives for R&D and, above all, encourage the better networking<\/strong>\u00a0of domestic companies with foreign corporations to establish industrial clusters in promising areas;\u00a0<\/p>\n – selectively target foreign direct investment\u00a0<\/strong>in sectors that align with their own existing industrial strengths;\u00a0<\/p>\n – and create incentives for foreign companies\u00a0to conduct more research locally<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/p>\n In this respect, the study advocates moving away from a reliance mainly on tax incentives for increased R&D expenditure to include more grants and even state subsidies.<\/p>\n In addition, the study recommends strengthening universities and research institutions and linking them with industry \u2013 for example, by tying funding for companies to cooperation with scientific institutions. There is also a need to accelerate the training of a sufficient number of highly qualified specialists in natural science subjects; to facilitate the immigration from abroad of such personnel; and to improve financing conditions for innovative companies<\/p>\n EU-CEE countries include Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.<\/em><\/p>\n iulian@romania-insider.com<\/em><\/p>\n (Photo source: Dreamstime.com)<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Central and Eastern European EU members (EU-CEE) have undergone an impressive process of economic catch-up since the early 2000s, but the previously successful model of taking over labour-intensive production steps as an \u2018extended workbench\u2019 for Western companies is increasingly nearing its limits and the countries need a new industrial policy worthy of the name […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1818\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofero.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}