L'UE est confrontée à une perte de productivité et un ralentissement de la croissance depuis près de vingt ans, alors que ses concurrents, la Chine et les États-Unis, ont pris une longueur d'avance, en prenant la tête de l'innovation et en conservant des secteurs clés.
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00:00My guest on the Europe Conversation this week is Antonio Campinos,
00:11president of the European Patent Organization.
00:14He says while Europe has lost competitiveness over the past two decades,
00:18there are opportunities in the United States given current political tensions
00:22where potentially talent could come back to Europe.
00:25Antonio Campinos, president of the European Patent Office,
00:30thank you very much for joining us on the Europe Conversation.
00:33It's a pleasure and honor to be here. Thank you for the invitation.
00:35Well, tell us a little bit about what the EPO does.
00:37The European Patent Organization has a European DNA,
00:41but is an international organization.
00:44And when you look to the world,
00:47it's the sole international organization who provides substantive examination of a patent.
00:52When you think that you have created a new technology,
00:56when you think that you have a new invention,
00:58you will seek for protection.
01:00And what the European Patent Office does
01:03is that it will check whether that technology that you forward to us
01:06and that you want to be protected as a patent is new,
01:10new compared to whatever has been invented or created by humanity.
01:14So patent literature, but also non-patent literature like scientific papers.
01:19If it has an inventive step, what is an inventive step?
01:23It's that that invention is not obvious for an expert in the field.
01:28And then you can apply that technology to industry.
01:31We have 39 member states.
01:34So we almost have all European countries.
01:37We go beyond the EU, obviously.
01:39We have member states like Turkey or Norway.
01:41We receive 200,000 applications per year.
01:46You would say 200,000, wow.
01:48200,000, wow, yes.
01:50But if you compare it to the US, that receives 600,000 applications.
01:54Or China, 1.5 million applications.
01:57You will see that 200,000.
01:59It's a good number.
02:00But still, there's a lot of technologies out there.
02:03Potential technologies, potential inventions
02:05are not converted into patents,
02:07which is the first step towards the commercialization.
02:09Yeah, so, I mean, why is it that Europe has been losing competitiveness
02:14and is not competing with the likes of the United States and China?
02:17I mean, it's a really big problem for Europe right now.
02:20Well, I think that in Europe,
02:23we have too much illegal approach to the matter.
02:29Patents is very much taught in universities on a legal perspective.
02:34In the US, it's rather the contrary.
02:37It's very much linked to the technology.
02:39So, the approach is totally different.
02:41That's the first thing.
02:43The second thing is that, of course,
02:46we struggle into bringing ideas into the market.
02:49And the patent is really at the middle road.
02:52We have like 700,000 scientific publications per year in Europe.
02:58To give you an order of comparison,
03:00the Americans would have 500,000.
03:03The Chinese, 900,000.
03:05But when you see then the patent application,
03:08you will see that we struggle to convert all this knowledge
03:11into successful commercial viable products.
03:15And why is that?
03:16I mean, so we have these sort of ideas,
03:18but we're not able to translate it into the market.
03:19Well, we have a different risk appetite than the US, for instance.
03:24The US do not fear to fail.
03:28Failing for the US is the first attempt to success.
03:31Here in Europe, we have this approach of when you fail,
03:33you are like almost a marginal.
03:35So, and we applied that way of seeing the world to everything we do.
03:42So, for instance, if you want to invest in a new technology,
03:46you want to be reassured that it will be a success.
03:49But you never know.
03:50You don't know.
03:50And most probably you're going to fail.
03:54Now what we need to do is, of course,
03:56like we discussed again on the drag report,
03:59I'd say that we're missing 800 billions to be a part with the Americans.
04:04But when you look at the structure of this investment,
04:07it's much more what we call seed capital,
04:10so early stage capital.
04:11When you are creating your startup,
04:14what we struggle is to scale up, to gain dimension.
04:18And then we need more funding.
04:20We need more risk appetite.
04:22Because if you want to be sure that you're going to have a successful scaling up,
04:27I mean, maybe one in 100 startups created will be successful,
04:32will be one day a 1 billion startup, what we call a unicorn.
04:36So, we need to invest more in the scaling up and two more things.
04:41First, retaining our startups.
04:44It is estimated, I think, that 30% it's on the drag report.
04:4830% of our unicorns, so 1 billion euros startup, so to say,
04:55move their quantities abroad.
04:57Mostly to the US.
04:59So, we need to retain them.
05:01You know, the Americans have a logo.
05:04They say, invented here, produced here.
05:08So, we need to start thinking the same way.
05:10What is invented in Europe needs to be produced in Europe.
05:14And now, with geopolitical tensions,
05:16we might even have a strategic opportunity to attract talent,
05:20attract researchers, attract talented, gifted people from the US to Europe.
05:26But where do you think the EU can maybe seek opportunities given the political atmosphere at the moment?
05:33As I said, I think that we need to rely more and more and more on ourselves.
05:38There's a limit to what we can rely on ourselves.
05:41For instance, we don't have raw materials.
05:43We have little raw materials.
05:46So, we need to diversify to whom we buy the raw materials that we need to build the ships that are so important for the electric cars.
05:55So, we need to look into ourselves, look into the single market, the internal market,
06:00and remove any administrative barrier that still exists when you want to import and export within the external market.
06:11And believe me, there's a lot of, a lot of, a lot of barriers.
06:14The first barrier is the lack of trust.
06:18So, if, for instance, you want to develop a new technology and you need to apply,
06:22you apply for funding, for public funding to the ICA, ZMEA, who are doing a terrific job, by the way,
06:29I mean, the number of formulas that you need to fill,
06:31the number of declarations you need to provide,
06:34I mean, it's right like 20% of the time that you should be dedicated to investigation to fill in form.
06:39We have to stop that.
06:40We need to cut the red tape.
06:42We need to simplify our legislation.
06:45So, the criticisms of the EU is constantly about red tape.
06:48I mean, regulations are important, but is it essentially that we're not matching the regulation with the innovation?
06:54I mean, in a way, I think that it went too far.
06:56Okay.
06:58It's the balance in one side.
07:00For instance, if you take our competition law or competition rules,
07:04they are there to protect free competition.
07:06Good thing.
07:06They are there to protect consumers.
07:09Good thing.
07:10But tell me, how many tech giants we have in Europe, in the IT area, for instance?
07:16How many big providers of cloud services we have in Europe?
07:20So, maybe the competition law should be when we compete within Europe.
07:24But we need to create the right incentives to create technological giants.
07:30If you look at the 50 most important companies in the world, Europeans, we have four.
07:34And this is also because of the competition law.
07:38So, we need to see where to apply this competition law.
07:41As I say, it's within the single market.
07:42It's fine.
07:43But if you want to compete with the US and China, you need to create, you need to have the right incentives and the right approach,
07:49concentration approach, in order to gain the same dimension that are the Chinese and the Americans.
07:53You know, one of the things I want to ask you about, because you mentioned in Mario Draghi's report, he's calling for 800 billion euros a year investment.
07:59That is a moment.
08:01Do you believe that the EU is finally grabbing this opportunity?
08:05Because at the same time, he and President Macron have said that the European way of life is mortal and could die if we don't.
08:13Absolutely.
08:13I totally agree with the statement.
08:15I mean, we have the most expensive social model.
08:17I mean, how many days of holidays you have?
08:21Well, I have.
08:22I mean, like 30.
08:23Yeah.
08:23I mean, in 15 years from now, I will have a pension.
08:28I have a social security coverage that is amazing.
08:31When you look at what the Americans have, they don't have even half of what we have.
08:35But we need to finance that.
08:37And to finance that, there's no other way to be more competitive.
08:42To gain competitive, you need to be innovative.
08:44To be innovative, you need technologies.
08:46And that will bring increases in productivity that we need to finance these 800 billions or maybe finance the Europe of space or Europe of defense.
08:55We need to be more productive.
08:57But are we there?
08:57That's what I'm asking.
08:58No, we're not there.
08:59We lost productivity.
09:00We lost productivity when we compare ourselves to the Americans and to the U.S.
09:05We lost productivity in the past 20 years.
09:08And why did we do that?
09:09And how can we get this back?
09:10We need to focus on gaining efficiency gains in our traditional industry.
09:16And we need to promote more and more disruptive technologies that will bring these increases in productivity, such as AI.
09:23Who doesn't use an AI model?
09:24I won't make no advertising.
09:27I'll make no advertising for specific AI models.
09:30But AI models are bringing a revolution in our lives.
09:35Bringing increases in tremendous increase in productivity, but they need to spread.
09:39They need to touch all industries.
09:41I want to bring you back to the political situation that we're in now with the United States.
09:45What do you think the implications of this trade war will be for Europe, of course, in terms of the economies, but also the dissolution in some way of the Western alliance, transatlantic alliance?
09:57Well, I mean, tariffs are not good for trade and not good for the European trade, but they're not good for the American trade.
10:05In the meantime, we need to rely on ourselves.
10:07We need to diversify our supply chains.
10:09And we need to look more, maybe expand our free trade agreements with natural partners, I would say, Canada, for instance, Mexico, so north of the U.S., south of the U.S., and obviously China.
10:24And what do you think the opportunities lie?
10:26Do you believe that maybe the innovation could come this way amid an insecure United States?
10:32I mean, there's no alternative.
10:34I mean, you said that, I don't know how you say this in English, but the necessity brings ingenuity.
10:43And we are indeed in need.
10:45We are in deep need.
10:46We are in deep need.
10:47So humankind is never as creative as when he is in need.
10:51And we are in need.
10:53The sense of urgency is there.
10:55So I think that, I mean, this is more than a wake-up call.
10:58This is a different world in which we have entered.
11:00And we are strong in Europe.
11:03We are still a big economic powerhouse.
11:07And the only thing is that we need to diversify.
11:10We can't rely now exclusively in the U.S. to protect us or to trade with us.
11:14We need to diversify our partnerships.
11:16Okay, just final question then.
11:18Are you optimistic about the next five years amid everything that we've talked about today?
11:23Global political instability, concerns around EU competitiveness and innovation.
11:29Are you optimistic?
11:30I think, to be honest, it's not a matter of being optimistic or not optimistic.
11:35The matter is that we will be somewhere in five years from now.
11:38And if we have noticed that something very wrong happened and will not happen.
11:42Europe has a strong history.
11:44Europe will be there in five years from now.
11:45We have a longer history than the Americans, I think.
11:47Okay.
11:48By my own calculations.
11:49Antonio Campinas, president of the European Patent Organization.
11:52Thank you very much for joining us.
11:53Thank you.
11:54It was a pleasure.
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