Kroes – one of the most dynamic commissioners Europe has seen – was prepared to back action. She launched the so called 10:100:20 plan in May 2013 – €10billion of EC funding, €100bn to be invested by industry, with the result being the 20% market share. Kroes said: “I want us in the driver’s seat; the sector wants to be back in the driver’s seat. So my message is this: we are going to make Europe the place to make and buy innovative micro and nanoelectronics.”
It took some time for the industry to respond, which it did in February 2014 via the 11 strong Electronic Leaders Group. At the time, it said it would transform its ideas into concrete action by June 2014 and it met the deadline with an implementation plan. Those ideas, by the way, focused on application areas where Europe was already strong, but also on sectors with potential high growth, such as the IoT and various ‘smart’ markets.
Last week, a new European body was unveiled, with an impressive list of partners. Set up to support the ELG strategy, PENTA is looking to stimulate up to €1.5billion of investment in electronics components and system R&D over the next five years. Sharp eyed readers will notice that €1.5bn is a bit short of the €100bn investment for which Kroes’ plan called.
European initiatives are many and varied; alongside ECSEL – Electronic Components and Systems for European Leadership – there are CATRENE, ENIAC, ITEA3, EURIPIDES2 and EUREKA. Often, it’s just as hard to understand how they relate to each other as it is to understand what their objectives are. In a white paper, PENTA appears to suggest that existing programmes aren’t set up to respond quickly and that it will be more agile when it comes to delivering technology on short timescales.
Is this the ELG’s way of saying that existing programmes just aren’t worth it? And if that’s the case, why were they set up in the first place?
