New years start with resolutions and a new decade calls for setting a decade long goal. A new European Commission takes office this month and it has published an ambitious agenda aimed at making sure Europe stays out in front of the globally competitive race in 2020. Entitled the EU2020 Communication, the Commission proposes "a new sustainable social market economy, a smarter, greener economy where our prosperity will result from innovation and from using resources better, and where knowledge will be the key input."
The Commission has asked for comments on its ideas and today we are making public our contribution.
We endorse the 2020 agenda, particularly its emphasis on planting the seeds for a flowering of the knowledge economy. But we are concerned that the Commission agenda is not sufficiently radical to cope with a fundamental, paradigm-shifting transformation. This blog is itself (albeit a very modest) part of that change.
This shift opens up dramatic new vistas, for entrepreneurs and consumers. Anybody with a good idea can create - and profit. Barriers to entry are low to non-existent - for example, many business models are based on smart evaluations of existing databases. The need for big investments are minimized. New pop stars such as Susan Boyle are created overnight on YouTube. Software start-ups are standing on the shoulders of open source coders. Google itself started little more than a decade ago in a garage.
If the paradigm is changing, it is no surprise that regulation needs to be reviewed to ensure that is supports creativity, innovation, respect of fundamental rights in this world. It is unlikely that overarching policy goals change, but the means to attaining them might well. Our response begins to explore that territory, while knowing that much deeper policy discussion will be an exciting feature of the new Commission.
Europe’s Heads of State will provide their views on the 2020 agenda at a summit in March. The Commission then will begin to work on legislative proposals for the member countries and European Parliament to approve. Google is of course in regular contact with all three institutions to promote the ideas and views contained in our response. Our hope is for Europe to lay the policy framework so the world’s next Google may be born on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.
Posted by Simon Hampton, Director of European Public Policy.
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