Belgium at the forefront of the EU from July

01 May 2010

Herman Van Rompuy, former Belgian prime minister, was recently elected to be the first permanent President of the European Council. He will soon be joined by his compatriots in leading the EU, as Belgium will take over the presidency on July 1 2010 for a period of six months.

Belgium is the second country in the troika with Spain and Hungary. The troika jointly drafted an 18-month programme of the Council, which was released on December 8 2009. In this draft it is clear that research and innovation will be in focus.

During this 18-month period the goal of this trio is to strengthen IP rights, including reaching an agreement on the establishment of a unified patent litigation system and an EU patent regulation. They also await with great interest the Commission's proposals in the field of copyright and the Commission review of the Community trade mark, which is being worked on by the Max Planck Institute (Munich), a leading research institution in the area of IP rights. The trio is further excited to be working on a directive, due by year's end, aimed at establishing a European framework which fosters digitisation of copyright-protected material while fully respecting authors' rights and the protection of orphan works.

Gevers, being recognised as prominent adviser in all aspects of IP, is regularly asked by official bodies to reflect on upcoming changes and is, for example, actively contributing to the research of the Max Planck Institute through independent organisations such as INTA and ECTA.

The targets of the EU 2020 strategy are already being widely discussed in Brussels and during the European Summit in March five EU headline targets were agreed upon, including: to increase spending on research and development, reduce poverty, and increase education and employment. These targets will have to be further refined and defined during the Belgian presidency.

Although Belgium will take the seat in a few months, there is no publicly detailed agenda yet of what exactly Belgium wants to achieve during the presidency. Nevertheless, it is already clear that Belgium is taking the lead in boosting research and innovation on an international level by hosting several conferences, for example the biennial Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Conference, the knowledge-based Bio-Economy Conference, EurOcean (marine and maritime research conference), Strategic Energy Technology Plan Conference, European Security Research Conference, Industrial Technologies, Enterprise Europe Network.

Clearly, more than ever, Belgium, and of course Brussels, is the place to be in 2010.