EU commissioner Janez Potocnik for research

Lagging behind, Europe – the WTO column

(later also in Chinabiz)

Brussels - The EU-commissioner for science and research Janez Potocnik struck me as a rather realistic guy, this week in Brussels. At a major conference about European science in a globalizing world, he counted his blessings. Potocnik can spend annually five billion Euros on research. “Daimler-Chrysler spends every year 5.9 billion Euros,” he said. “But we should not only look at my budget.” He wants to double it, but that struggle is still ongoing.

But also in a percentage of its GDP with 1.9 percent, Europe is lagging behind the US (2.6 percent), Japan (3.2%) while China is catching up very fast with 1.6 percent and growing 10 percent annually.

What is more troublesome than the limited budgets is the attitude in Europe towards the internet as a disruptive technology for almost all industries. Two times this week in Europe decision makers told me it was better not to email them “since I never read them anyway”. When you are familiar with China, you might forget that this kind of dinosaurs can survive in a fast globalizing world. In Europe they can, and that is a bad sign.

Even my mother of 85 is on the internet and sends me regularly emails. But as a chief negotiator for the international trade unions you can live without. Even worse, the second person without an email connection was in charge of content on one of the major websites of the EU. Dealing with a major information provider for the EU and not even having an email address. How much funnier can it get?

I joined as discussion of a few scientists, who were complaining about the accessibility of this major website on scientific research. I was interested right away, since I had been struggling through their overload of information and could only agree.

In China so many governmental website works so much more efficient than this major EU-project.

They had an answer, since the criticism was obviously not new. They had made a brochure that should guide us through the website. How much more past century can you get? A brochure to guide you through their website, how much funnier can it get? Unfortunately, I lost the brochure as I dumped kilos of useless dead trees the organizers had dumped on me.

China and the US have the advantage of at least a nationwide written language, compared to the patchwork of languages in Europe. That explains partly why the development of digital content and conversation models in Europe are lagging behind. Here they can learn from China.

Fons Tuinstra