Erkki Liikanen, Commissioner for enterprise, commented:
"While growth accelerated and employment
increased in the EU in the late 1990s, the key question is why the
EU nevertheless lost out to the US in terms of competitiveness and
living standards. The Competitiveness Report 2001 singles out two
important causes: weaknesses in EU's innovative performance and a
slower introduction of new technologies."
In recent years, prices of information and communications
technology (ICT) goods and services have declined at an
extraordinary speed, while their quality has improved continuously.
This has encouraged ICT investments throughout the economy.
However, in the EU, ICT investments in the business sector have
been smaller than in the US: in 1999, 2.4% of GDP against 4.5% in
the US.
At the Lisbon Summit last year, the EU set itself the goal of
becoming the world’s most dynamic high-tech economy by the end of
the decade. According to these results, this goal may be difficult
to achieve.
