A recent EC study, Competitiveness of the European Food Industry, suggested that Europe is falling behind its global rivals, demonstrating a weakness in this area compared to that of the US and Canada. Europe is at approximately the same level as Australia and Brazil in terms of competitiveness in the food industry.
The EC's new initiative, which will be discussed at an international conference to be held November 15-16 in Brussels, will aim to set out a package of measures to be undertaken in 2008.
Topics to be addressed include the challenges faced by the European food industry, as well as a basis on which to build the new initiative. A high level group of advisors will be set up to oversee the new project.
The food and drink industry is the single biggest manufacturing sector in Europe, buying and selling 70 per cent of Europe's agricultural output. It is made up of about 280,000 companies, provides jobs for four million people and has an annual turnover in excess of €800bn. The EU is the world's largest exporter and importer of food products.
However, according to the recent EC report, Europe's poor competitiveness highlights the diminishing capability of the sector to generate innovation and enough profit to allow for adequate reinvestment to maintain or even conquer market share in domestic and foreign markets.
Scenarios show that unless the productivity growth is higher than in the rest of the world, EU competitiveness remains weak. However, despite the weak competitive performance, many of world leading food enterprises are located in the EU, and the importance of the food industry is growing.
The new initiative will be another step in the Europe's drive to become the world's most competitive economy.
In July 2005, the European Technology Platform Food of Life was launched by the CIAA - the European Confederation of the Food and Drink Industries - in a bid to improve research and development efforts in the industry.
The EU food and drink industry currently spends less on R&D than its main competitors (only 0.32 per cent of turnover compared to 0.40 in the US and 0.79 in Japan). The Food of Life Platform aims to focus research spending on health, quality, manufacturing, production consumer trends, food safety, supply chain management, communications, training and technology transfer.
Other recent initiatives established by the EC include the improvement of certain legislative provisions and CAP reform to increase market-orientation and improve competitiveness of agricultural raw materials.
More information on the conference and the future initiative will be released later this month.
