Innovation Europe > News > Innovation EU Vol2-1 > Innovation Belgium

The Belgian economy entered a deep recession during the second half of 2008 due to the international economic crisis. This, in turn, has had a knock-on effect on the Belgian innovation system.

In particular, R&D budgets are likely to decrease and these investments are precarious due to the dominance of a few large and foreign firms in the total expenditure. Belgium’s research and innovation performance is characterised by high investments by the business sector, off-setting under-investment by the public sector.

Belgium has a well-educated population, but is losing ground in the area of new science and technology graduates; a situation worsened by the uncompetitive net wages that are paid to researchers and engineers.

The low propensity to become an entrepreneur remains a cause for concern.

Main innovation challenges

• Innovation skills mismatch.
• Creating and growing knowledge-intensive enterprises.
• Creating a favourable environment for the exploitation of research results in Belgium.

Conclusions

Innovation policy is central for regional government, but it is unclear whether government budgets for innovation will increase as they have done in previous years. With the budgets available there exist several opportunities for innovation policy:

• Boost attractiveness for starting an innovative business, promoting entrepreneurship and the availability of risk capital.
• Create a favourable environment for the exploitation of research results in Belgium. The R&D and innovation efforts do not yet bring sufficient new activities to ensure economic development of the country (Belgium is focusing R&D efforts on sectors that do not generate much added value in the economy).
• Keep investing in people to diminish the skills mismatch: promoting science and engineering studies and lifelong learning are essential to maintain an upsurge of skills and qualifications to build the country’s competitiveness.

Positive signs of a proactive policy to support R&D policy of the different governments are becoming more tangible, but efforts are still needed to ensure this policy leads to new activities and jobs that increase the resilience of the Belgian economy and help the country withstand the current economic difficulties and maintain comparative advantages.

A more systematic use of policy intelligence (roadmaps, evaluations and stakeholder debate) may help in setting up these activities in the most effective and efficient way.