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| EU Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, Mariya Gabriel (left) |
SOFIA (Bulgaria), June 25 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Europe is set for a new surge in high-tech innovation, the European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, Mariya Gabriel, told an Innovation through Politics Conference in Sofia on Friday.
The event was organized by MEP Tsvetelina Penkova.
Gabriel said high-tech innovation is a unique combination of a software component and a hardware component. “Europe is a leader in science but is lagging behind in innovation,” the Bulgarian member of the European Commission noted.
She went on to say that the European Commission will launch its new European Innovation Programme within two weeks. “Many things have changed since the last innovation strategy, which dated back to 2020,” Gabriel said.
She admitted that innovation can happen without politics, but the result, she said, is that companies leave Europe and ideas turn into services which do not bring benefit for much of society. “Therefore, politics, in cooperation with the innovation sector, should set the direction,” Gabriel said.
The Commissioner further stressed the link between innovation and education, which she described as very important. She noted that innovation is included in the European Strategy for Universities for the first time. “We can turn these initiatives into reality,” she added.
Bulgarian Industrial Capital Association (BICA) President Vassil Velev estimated that two-thirds of successful innovations occur in industry. “In case of de-industrialization, it is impossible to achieve a breakthrough in innovation,” Velev argued. “Industry is the ground on which innovation grows.”
“The share of industry in the gross value added of the Bulgarian economy is higher than the average level in the EU by 20-25 percentage points, which is very good but not popular,” Velev said. “Over half of the country’s GDP is generated through exports. We have dozens of companies which are among the world’s top 10 in mechanical engineering, pharmaceuticals, electronics and transport, but this fact remains largely unknown.”
Velev stressed that innovation takes human resources and development of education. The National Recovery and Resilience Plan stipulates the building of over 1,500 STEM offices (the acronym stands for “science, technology, engineering, and mathematics”). This is very important to accomplish, the BICA President said.
“The IT sector is developing well. It has very deep roots: similar offices for computer training of young people were available 30 years ago. Many of today’s leading experts in this domain started from there. So these STEM offices now should be built to give birth to new IT researchers,” he insisted. — NNN-AGENCIES
