Centres of
competitiveness, a different way of defining tomorrow’s industry
FRANCE'S INDUSTRIAL AMBITION ON THE
OFFENSIVE
- Melina Gazsi, France
Faced with the challenges of globalization,
France has launched a national offensive based on a major industrial ambition with the
announcement that it is creating some twenty "centers of competitiveness". The
idea is to build powerful regional business clusters, real districts in the broad sense
and "breeding
grounds" in which the notion of
competitiveness will be underpinned by technological and scientific attributes. And where
businesses will join forces to build dedicated districts with modern and innovative
structures concentrating on one specialty.
In keeping with the goal set at the 2000
Lisbon Summit to make Europe the world's most competitive economy, French Prime Minister
Jean-Pierre Raffarin unveiled the launch of the new French industrial policy by the
Inter-ministerial Regional Planning and Development Committee (CIADT) on 14 September
2004. The stated objective focuses firmly on building centers of competitiveness to step
up French industry's specialization, create the conditions for new lines of business with
a high international profile and improve the drawing power of the different parts of
France.
What is a center of competitiveness? The
CIADT defines it as a "group of businesses, training centres and research units in a
given area involved in a partnership approach designed to generate synergies for shared
innovative projects and with the critical mass necessary for international
visibility."
To be more precise, the aim is to persuade
businesses, researchers and local political representatives to work together; to encourage
the pooling of resources, purchasing groups, shared premises, and so on; to involve human
resources in development by grouping together employers; to foster links between
industries, research and education; to further business start-ups; to promote networking
policy at European level and to associate the regions with it.
Granted, centres of competitiveness are not
really a new concept since France already has some models of this kind, such as Cosmetic
Valley in Eure-et-Loir, which has generated 1,360 jobs in ten years. The Palaiseau-Saclay
plateau in the Paris area is another example. It groups together top universities - the
Ecole Polytechnique scientific education and research establishment, the HEC School of
Management and the Supelec energy and information science engineering institute - the
French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) and businesses such as Thales and Danone. Not
forgetting Sofia-Antopolis created in the Alpes-Maritimes 35 years ago...
However, these centres so far have a
relatively small weight in the national economy whereas such networks called
"clusters" or "districts" have been operating successfully for years
in the United States and other European countries such as Denmark, Italy and Galicia in
Spain.
It has to be said that many reports have put
the case for their development. The Delegation for Regional Planning and Action (DATAR)
study dated 23 February 2004 recommended a number of measures to manage economic change,
including the creation of "local production systems" called SPLs or
"centres of competitiveness". Nicolas Jacquet, Director of DATAR, feels that
France is still quite definitely an industrial power, but that it is changing. And the
main question is how to manage the changes. Since, "Tomorrow's industry will be
mainly a consumer of brainpower," he explains. MP Christian Blanc's report published
in April 2004 comes to the same conclusion. It explores how to develop the French system
seen as too vertical and too compartmentalized and shows how certain developed countries
and regions - Sweden, Finland, Catalonia, Bavaria and others - have managed to remain
competitive despite high labor costs. And the report stresses that, "Innovation is
the hard core of tomorrow's economy." A Senate think tank headed by Christian Gaudin
on the relocation of labour intensive industries gave rise to the publication of another
report in June 2004, which also highlighted the need to adapt to change and be innovative
in the design of products.
Following the October 2003 creation of an
Inter-ministerial Task Force on Economic Change (MIME), the Prime Minister signed a
circular regarding planning for and managing economic change on 28 January 2004. Among
other things, this circular defined the roles to be played by DATAR and MIME: DATAR's role
is to steer local management of economic change. In addition, MINE, a small
multidisciplinary team headed by Jean-Pierre Aubert and comprising five senior civil
servants made available by the ministries of employment, labour and social cohesion,
defence, economy, finance and industry, and the interior is responsible for the overall
consistency of actions.
All that was missing, then, was a spur to
drive things on. This came with the launch of a call for projects. DATAR will study the
bids and a CIADT meeting, probably in spring next year, will draw up a first list of
officially certified centres. The government will free up €750 million for the scheme
from 2005 to 2007. Of this sum, €370 million will come from the ministries' budgets
and €380 million from State public establishments, towit the Deposit and Consignments
Office, the French Agency for Innovation (ANVAR), and the Development Bank for Small and
Medium-Sized Enterprises (BDPME) and its subsidiary Sofaris. This financial assistance
could be rounded out by the regions and the European funds, in compliance with the EU rule
on combining different aids. First in line among the applicants are Isere and Brittany
with the Crolles and Lannion sites.
Text courtesy: ACTUALITE EN FRANCE
Series No. 62/03, Embassy of France, Kathmandu. |
