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8 - Biotechnology in the European Union: a case study of political entrepreneurship
- Edited by Volker Bornschier, Universität Zürich
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- Book:
- State-building in Europe
- Published online:
- 10 October 2009
- Print publication:
- 05 October 2000, pp 210-243
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Summary
‘Just as “telematics” and its various areas of application were the focal point of technological, scientific, and human activities in the 1980s, experts believe that the biological revolution unleashed by discoveries of biotechnology will become the greatest challenge of the 1990s.’
Etienne Davignon (1981: 189f, my translation)Introduction
In this chapter we examine the question of whether technology corporatism – established at the beginning of the 1980s – also flourishes beyond the domain of information technology, where it was initiated (see chapter 4). Moreover, we consider whether it shaped Europe's competitive position in biotechnology, an industry widely considered to be among the most dynamic in the twenty-first century.
The starting point of a European biotechnology policy was the Commission's insight at the beginning of the 1980s that the Community displayed a technological backwardness with respect to the USA and Japan and that bio-industry could make a decisive contribution to resolving the employment problem. Therefore, by the middle of the 1990s, the advancement of biotechnology was to become – as Davignon predicted above – an established goal of the technology policy of the European Union. Consequently, the Commission pushed for research programmes and a corporatist policy formulation process that included the participation of the interest organizations of bio-industry.
In contrast to information technology, however, the ‘national champions’ in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries were not very interested in European research programmes similar to Esprit (see chapter 4). Indeed, they had already established transregional alliances even before the first programme was launched and preferred competitive to pre-competitive research. Yet, during the 1990s their industry associations closely cooperated with the Commission because they regarded existing regulations as too restrictive.
7 - Lobbying for a Europe of big business: the European Roundtable of Industrialists
- Edited by Volker Bornschier, Universität Zürich
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- Book:
- State-building in Europe
- Published online:
- 10 October 2009
- Print publication:
- 05 October 2000, pp 187-209
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Summary
‘We value the fact that the ERT not only engages in lobbying, narrowly defined, but also makes general proposals and elaborates general projects. We have access on a higher level than all the associations, unions, etc.; we are not lost among the many partners in dialogue, we speak directly with Commission presidents, with the heads of government or at a minimum directly with the economic ministers.’
Helmut Maucher, President of the Board of Directors of Nestlé and chairman of the European Roundtable of Industrialists since 1996, interview, 11 July 1995Introduction
The signing of the Single European Act did not make the internal market a fait accompli, a view shared by European Roundtable members, whose actions became more pronounced. A watchdog group, the Internal Market Support Committee, was formed in December 1986; its members met regularly with unions, heads of state and government, top government officials and key commissions of the European Community and emphasized the urgency of fulfilling the goals set by the Single European Act. Nowadays, the European Roundtable of Industrialists (ERT) is still considered one of the most influential interest organizations in Brussels. The evidence for this consists not only of the self-description by the president of the Nestlé administrative council and interviews with representatives of European umbrella organizations but also in the very origins of the Single European Act (see chapter 3).
In this chapter, we want to sketch the organization and development as well as the financial and management interconnections of the Round-table. First, the history and the activities of the Roundtable up to the passage of the Single European Act are outlined.