The policy agenda: challenges for the new Europe

This article argues that, just as science and technology policies played a key role in the early 1980s in dispelling Euro-pessimism and establishing a new momentum towards European integration, so, in the early 1990s, science and technology policies offer a viable way to confront Europe's present crisis of confidence. The agenda has shifted. Today the issues of unemployment, the environment and how best to assimilate the countries of Eastern and Central Europe jostle for priority alongside the older issues of competitiveness and globalization. In spite of the pessimism, none of these challenges is insuperable. On the contrary, it is argued, a co-ordinated supply-side response which gives priority, East and West, to encouraging investment in new equipment, new skills and energy-saving clean technologies, provides a route both out of recession and to increased competitiveness in the global market place.