Research, innovation and data: a fifth freedom in the EU single market?

The European Union’s single market famously enables four freedoms: the movement of goods, services, capital and labour. Former Italian prime minister Enrico Letta, in his report on the single market issued and discussed by EU leaders in April, proposed a fifth freedom as a top priority, to encompass...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Policy File 2024
Main Author: Martens, Bertin
Format: Report
Language:English
Subjects:
Capital
EC single market
Economic development
International trade
Labor force
Online Access:Request full text
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Summary:The European Union’s single market famously enables four freedoms: the movement of goods, services, capital and labour. Former Italian prime minister Enrico Letta, in his report on the single market issued and discussed by EU leaders in April, proposed a fifth freedom as a top priority, to encompass research, innovation, data and knowledge that have become indispensable drivers of innovation in modern economies (Letta, 2024). Letta argues that the EU has under-utilised its pools of data, expertise and startups. This wealth of resources benefits global tech giants that are better positioned to capitalise on it and hampers the EU’s strategic autonomy and economic security. He claims that it is a necessary extension of the single market for the EU to become a creator of new technologies and foster the development of leading industrial ecosystems of global importance, with a strong European technological infrastructure in areas including data utilisation, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, biotech, bio-robotics and space. The Letta report contains a number of constructive and innovative ideas. Most importantly, he does not just attempt to put the fifth freedom on par with other single market freedoms. Instead, he puts it squarely at the top of all single market freedoms: innovation as the necessary condition for the success of all other freedoms, indeed for the success of the EU as an economic project.