Role and effect of JTIs and PPPs in implementing Horizon 2020 for sustainable industrial change. (own-initiative opinion)

In this opinion the EESC urges that JTIs and cPPPs be put in place in order to:

• boost coherence with other partnerships and initiatives on a scene increasingly crowded with concurrent policies;

• extend the value chain with a sharper focus on the market and broader participation from the demand side in terms of both numbers of users in the countries involved and new actors throughout the value chain, making use of the synergies generated by interoperability with other initiatives;

• give greater prominence to multidisciplinary approaches, bringing in new stakeholder communities, especially at local, grassroots level.

The EESC proposes setting up a European Innovation Council with strong representation of industry and society, with pan-European infrastructure networks to support innovation, as a useful instrument for closer coordination of initiatives, not least with the courses of action of other European and international R&I organisations, and with comparable international partnerships.

The EESC calls upon the Commission, the European Parliament and the Council to work together to hold an interinstitutional conference as soon as possible on the role of public-private technology partnerships in European reindustrialisation, with a view to the next R&I Framework Programme after 2020.