5th Mercator European Dialogue – The Future of EU Prosperity: Addressing the Modernization Challenge

Briefing Notes (March 2018)

European industries are a major driver for growth, employment and innovation with the potential to stimulate prosperity by leading sustainable economic transformations within the EU. To date the EU is still a world leader in many industrial sectors, such as pharmaceuticals, mechanical engineering, and fashion industries. However, the European industrial landscape is facing a projected shortage of ICT skills, and the innovation gap when compared to countries like Japan or South Korea, is still wide. In 2016, South Korea (130.7) and Japan (111.5) registered an excellent global performance of their innovation systems and were among the best global innovation leaders, according to the European Commission’s Innovation Scoreboard, placing themselves well above the EU average (101.8).