Portugal has just completed its six-month presidency of the European Union. Conclusions from this presidency, approved by the Competitiveness Council in December, covered the future of science and technology in Europe, the modernisation of universities, nanosciences and nanotechnologies, and scientific publishing in the digital age. Decisions were also reached on the four Joint Technology Initiatives: ENIAC (on nanoelectronics), ARTEMIS (on embedded systems), IMI (on innovative medicines), and Clean Sky (on aeronautics). There were also decisions on the regulations for the proposed European Institute of Innovation and Technology and on the Council approach to the Ambient Assisted Living research initiative.

The Portuguese presidency also asked European research ministers to jointly produce a book, The Future of Science and Technology in Europe, which was presented to the December European Council meeting. It contains texts by each of Europe's research ministers explaining how their national policies were conceived and how they are progressing towards contributing to common European objectives. This book is also available in digital form.

Portugal itself has suffered low economic and productivity growth for a number of years. The government recognises the impact this is having on national competitiveness, and has launched a Technological Plan to use innovation to help address the issue.

The Technological Plan has three main axes: knowledge, technology and innovation. The government's strategy for knowledge focuses on improving the workforce's skills. The technology strand is meant to support efforts to overcome Portugal's relative weakness in science and technology. The innovation strand focuses on updating economic structures and diffusing best practice into business.

The Technological Plan includes 21 targets, to be achieved by 2010, including boosting public R&D expenditure to 1% of GDP and business R&D expenditure to 0.8% of GDP. Major challenges include improving the nation's skills, through public education policy and greater business backing for skills. The Plan also calls for companies to do more training and employ more skilled people, and for the development of technological schools. It also encourages business to hire more skilled people, and promotes the integration of companies into the digital economy.

As in any economy, this is a continuing process, especially in terms of improving education levels, linking curricula to economic needs, stimulating science and technology careers, promoting lifelong learning and encouraging entrepreneurship.

The knowledge part of the Technological Plan addresses this challenge. For example, its New Opportunities initiative is designed to improve the skills of people who left the education system before completing secondary education. The idea is to have one million people enrolled by 2010. Other measures include the improvement in basic education, technology specialisation courses, stronger technical schools, and efforts to encourage the entrepreneurial initiative of young people.

Portugal is also working on improving collaboration between businesses, and between industry and academia. The government is fostering research consortia, creating technology transfer and industrial property support offices in its universities, and trying to promote business co-operation. An initiative to encourage co-operation between organisations involved in innovation on specific issues is also underway.

Innovation governance is based on two key ministries: the Ministry for the Economy and Innovation, and the Ministry for Science and Higher Education. They share the responsibility for the Innovation Agency, which is in charge of implementing business-orientated innovation policies. Other agencies take a role in promoting a more knowledge-based society. The Knowledge Society Unit defines and implements policy information society initiatives. The Institute for Small and Medium-Sized Firms and Investment manages e-government programmes for supporting company investment and modernisation.

Portugal is also engaging with world-leading educational establishments. The Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education, has signed a long-term collaboration deal with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) focusing on basic research and education. The deal will see MIT collaborating with Portuguese research centres, including 10 schools of higher education and seven universities, as well as various research centres, labs and state labs.

Specific goals include work towards a possible multi-year collaboration around management education and technology-based entrepreneurship, and a five-year deal on research and education around complex engineering systems.