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

The economic crisis has had pervasive effects across all economic sectors. Large firms have been hit but, even more dramatically, so have small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which account for 98.6% in industry and constructions, and 99.9% in trade and other services (National Institute of Statistics, 2007).

The E10.5bn anti-crisis plan proposed by the government in January 2009 and a second in May gave no explicit funding for innovation and research measures, which reflects the low visibility and importance of innovation policies in the country.

Gross expenditure on research and development (GERD) was cut to only 0.18% of the GDP in January 2009 instead of the foreseen 0.89%. Following strong protests from the scientific community, it was supplemented one month later with approximately E148m, reaching 0.27% of the GDP (approximately E430m, 1 E = 4.2 RON), but still remained significantly lower than the 2008 GERD level.

According to the European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) 2008, Romania’s innovation performance is well below the EU-27 average, ranking third to last among the EU-27 countries, with a value of the Summary Innovation Index (SII) of 0.277.

Main innovation challenges

• Increase the innovative potential of enterprises, particularly SMEs.
• Improve technology transfer and business support infrastructure (business incubators, technology transfer offices, S&T parks, and so on).
• Improve partnerships among industry, university and R&D institutions.

Conclusion

The drastic cuts in the public budget for RDI and the declining economic environment have strongly affected the research institutions and firms with RDI activities but, so far, neither NASR nor other innovation-related agencies have proposed clear innovation-based recovery measures.

Moreover, neither of the two anti-crisis plans of the government includes any reference to innovation-based strategies to restore economic growth, and follow instead a Keynesian approach of massive investments in infrastructure (roads, buildings, and so on) to revamp market demand. This reflects the low visibility and importance that innovation policy has in the public debate.

Possible orientations for future policy actions may include targeted policies and programmes for improving technology transfer to the business sector; specific policies and programmes to support development of the existing “emerging clusters” into fully fledged industrial clusters; and specific policies and programmes to support academic research and development of the “entrepreneurial university” concept.

This will require a much stronger collaboration between NASR and the Ministry for SMEs, Trade and Business Environment. In addition, a stronger collaboration between NASR and the regional development agencies (RDAs) will be required.