EUROPE lives in fear of decline. It is not just about the current economic woes 鈥� unemployment stuck at high levels in France and Germany and sluggish growth in many countries. But also the threat that China and India will take away ever more jobs. It is not hard to conjure up a bleak future of crumbling wealth and eroding social security.
Europe鈥檚 leaders have looked into this abyss and decided that the future lies in a sophisticated high-tech economy, in which ingenuity is more important than cheap labour. The aim is to slug it out with the US for global leadership at the frontiers of discovery.
So, these days, there is a lot more talk in Brussels about science, technology and education. This involves more than just money. Justice ministers are setting up fast-track visas to attract foreign scientists. Economics ministers are loosening the rules that limit the R&D subsidies nations can give to firms. It鈥檚 pervasive.
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More broadly, there has been a shift towards free-market 鈥� or, as the critics would have it, 鈥淎nglo-Saxon鈥� 鈥� economics. Make the EU鈥檚 internal market more competitive by ripping out protective barriers and, in a kind of survival of the fittest, companies will evolve that can take on the world.
The old, more consensual ways of doing things have not been discarded altogether. So the EU constitution that France votes on next week is a melange of old and new, continental and Anglo-Saxon. The same mixture is reflected in the new approach to science. Europe has as many scientists as the US and spends almost as much on research. But it suffers from fragmentation, both of academic and commercial effort. Now both the Anglo-Saxon and continental approaches are being deployed to fix the problems.
One of the reasons US universities have the lion鈥檚 share of the world鈥檚 top researchers is the cut-throat competition. Academics that don鈥檛 publish in leading journals perish. In Europe by contrast, there are many researchers publishing a little mediocre work 鈥� and doing very nicely, thank you.
The EU鈥檚 solution is more Anglo-Saxon competition. In 2007, the European Commission will establish a European Research Council with a budget probably exceeding 1 billion a year. The council鈥檚 creators intend that this money will be handed out on a competitive basis to the best researchers in Europe.
Similar reasoning is producing once-in-a-lifetime upheavals in science in both France and Germany. In France, President Jacques Chirac is trying to reorganise the entire research system, creating new funding agencies and new institutions to do the research. In Germany, chancellor Gerhard Schr枚der is trying to push through reforms that will create a cadre of elite universities capable of competing with Oxford and Harvard.
To nurture scientific talent, both leaders are having to overturn approaches to research that are deeply embedded in their national culture. Chirac has broken with the Gaullist tradition of running the country from Paris and spelled out that new money for science will be allocated according to 鈥渢he criteria of international excellence鈥�. He is now mired in conflict with groups representing researchers.
These disputes are signs that the Anglo-Saxon reforms are already making many established researchers and institutions feel nervous 鈥� which is precisely the intention.
鈥淓urope鈥檚 leaders have not yet summoned the courage to make the painful changes required鈥�
Meanwhile, the continental approach is being applied to the fragmentation of Europe鈥檚 commercial R&D. France ended the second world war with plenty of regional cheeses but little high-tech industry. It remedied that with a policy of dirigisme, government working hand in glove with industry to develop and sell new technologies.
To compete with huge US and Japanese corporations, that approach is now to be applied at the European level. The EC is establishing a number of Joint Technology Initiatives in areas including fuel cells and nano-electronics. It will pour around 1 billion of public funds into each. The European Commission will share control and ownership of the results with some of Europe鈥檚 biggest firms. The aim is to wrest dominance of entire industries away from the US, just as Airbus is attempting with US rival Boeing.
The question is: will all this activity be enough? Can this very European mixture of competition and cooperation beat the US at least some of the time and hold China at bay?
The answer is that it could, given a chance. Europe鈥檚 leaders have seen the problems and identified the remedies. But they have not yet summoned up the courage to make the sometimes painful changes required.
In France, these tensions are being played out in the debate over the vote on the constitution. To persuade voters that the EU is not becoming too Anglo-Saxon, Chirac has just vetoed a directive that would create a single market for services across Europe. It seems that, just as France鈥檚 voters are hesitating over the constitution, so Europe is hesitating over making the changes it knows are needed. We may be afraid of decline, but for now, we are not nearly afraid enough.