RESUMEN
Countries of Southern Europe are currently suffering from severe socio-economic pain resulting from high debt levels and austerity measures which constrain investment in innovation-based recovery strategies that are essential for entry into a long-term sustainable period of increasing employment and wealth creation. Young university-educated people are particularly innovative, and hence vital to the development of such strategies, but employment opportunities are poor and many are forced to seek employment that neither profits from their training nor satisfies their justified career expectations, or to emigrate. They are the 'lost generation'. A strategy is proposed here for the creation of Pipelines for New Chemicals, national centre-network partnerships for the discovery-synthesis of new chemicals obtained though harvesting new biological diversity, and their exploitation to develop new medicines, agrochemicals, materials, and other products and applications. The goal is to create new regional motors of economic growth and development, by harnessing the knowledge, motivation and innovation potential of the excellently educated young people of Europe to catalyse the development of new small, medium and large enterprises centred around novel chemicals, and the value chains that will evolve with them, and thereby develop a powerful sector of sustainable growth in employment and social and economic prosperity in Southern Europe.
Asunto(s)
Productos Biológicos/economía , Biotecnología/economía , Emigración e Inmigración , Empleo/economía , Europa (Continente) , Recursos HumanosRESUMEN
"Food, Agriculture and Fisheries and Biotechnology" is one of 10 thematic areas in the Cooperation programme of the European Union's 7th Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration Activities (FP7). With a budget of nearly 2 billion for the period 2007-2013, its objective is to foster the development of a European Knowledge-Based Bio-Economy (KBBE) by bringing together science, industry and other stakeholders that produce, manage or otherwise exploit biological resources. Biotechnology plays an important role in addressing social, environmental and economic challenges and it is recognised as a key enabling technology in the transition to a green, low carbon and resource-efficient economy. Biotechnologies for non-health applications have received a considerable attention in FP7 and to date 61 projects on industrial, marine, plant, environmental and emerging biotechnologies have been supported with a contribution of 262.8 million from the European Commission (EC). This article presents an outlook of the research, technological development and demonstration activities in biotechnology currently supported in FP7 within the Cooperation programme, including a brief overview of the policy context.