Public procurement for R&D

University association calls for increase in public procurement budgets for R&D

Member States should use a greater proportion of their research and development (R&D) public procurement budgets to encourage businesses to draw on the university-research base, a new report by the League of European Research Universities (LERU) has argued.

The LERU report, 'Universities and Innovation: The Challenge for Europe', notes that in 2004, governments across Europe spent in excess of €170 billion on public procurement. But only €1.64 billion of this went towards procuring R&D, and tended to be for well-tried, low cost technologies from major suppliers, rather than novel technologies and products coming from small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).