Research, Quality, Competitiveness: European Union Technology Policy for the Knowledge-based Society

The European Union (EU) was launched as a response to the economic dominance of the United States and – to a lesser degree – the Soviet Union. The nations of Western Europe were too small to compete against large scale and diversified economies on their own. Six countries, eventually expanding to 27 (and counting), took a series of steps toward progressively deeper integration: the removal of int- nal tariffs, the construction of a common external tariff, the elimination of many (but not al...