Innovation is not a reason to prevent or delay legislation. Society has discovered to its cost that innovation is not automatically good because it is new...
The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), industriAll Europe and UNI Europa, European trade unions, have serious concerns about this so-called principle, because:
“We support innovation that benefits workers and citizens” said Ulrich Eckelmann, General Secretary of industriAll Europe. “Innovation is not a reason to prevent or delay legislation. Society has discovered to its cost that innovation is not automatically good because it is new. Why not a quality jobs principle,
or a social justice principle, or an equality principle? They really are good principles, unlike innovation.”
“Innovation can be held back or driven by regulation, but that is not the central issue. The real question is whether the regulation benefits society and not vested interests.” said Veronica Nilsson, ETUC Deputy General Secretary “We have already had enough problems with good legislation being delayed by ‘Refit’ and so-called ‘Better Regulation’ without adding another unnecessary obstacle.”
ETUC, industriAll Europe and UNI Europa would prefer that the Competitiveness Council and European Parliament rejected the so-called innovation principle. If this proved impractical, it should be amended as follows:
“This obvious push from business interests is unacceptable”, said Oliver Roethig, Regional Secretary of UNI Europa. “The inter-institutional agreement has just been signed by all three institutions, and includes vast improvements to the requirements for impact assessments. It would be absurd to add a new dimension at this stage.”
The "innovation principle" will be discussed under item 13 of the Provisional Agenda for the Competitiveness Council ‘Draft Council conclusions on research and innovation friendly regulation’. Page 9 of the Council’s ‘background brief’ for the meeting says that at an informal Netherlands presidency meeting of Research Ministers on 27 January “ministers discussed …. the “innovation principle”, whereby all new European legislation must be evaluated in terms of its impact on research and innovation.”
For more information
Julian Scola, ETUC, jscola@etuc.org, mobile +32 486 117 394
Alice Nguyen, industriAll Europe, Alice.Nguyen@industriall-europe.eu, T +32 2226 0068, M: +32 475 876 774
Elke Zander, Uni Europa, elke.zander@uniglobalunion.org, tel +32 2 235 08 75