For last two days the Latvian Presidency hosted the meeting in Riga of the Research Working Party (RWP) of the Council of the European Union, to discuss the draft Council conclusions on open, data-intensive and networked research as a driver for faster and wider innovation.
The draft Council conclusions will be proposed for adoption at the Competitiveness Council in May in Brussels. They recognise the high potential of the data-driven economy and emphasize the importance of better framework conditions for fostering data-based innovation taking into account the research perspective.
The proposed Council conclusions will make an important contribution to the Latvian Presidency’s digital priority. It is therefore of particular significance that the meeting was held in Riga, where the delegations from all EU Member States had the opportunity to learn first-hand about Latvia’s achievements in the area of information technologies and services, including the digital aspects of multilingualism. In this regard, Andrejs Vasiljevs (Dr. sc. comp.), the chairperson of the board of Latvian language technology company Tilde, addressed the RWP delegates. In his presentation Andrejs Vasiljevs emphasised that “Data-intensive research and close cooperation between European research and industry have a tremendous potential for innovation and economic growth. Research Working Party meeting in Riga provided an important contribution in this debate.”
Ms Lauma Sika, the Chair of the Research Working Party concluded the meeting by emphasising that the productive discussion demonstrated support from the Member States to the proposed Council conclusions, and further underlined the importance of research and innovation in the forthcoming Digital Single Market Strategy.
The Working Party on Research handles matters in the research and innovation area, including legislation, before they are discussed in the Competitiveness Council meetings.