Following the Lisbon strategy designed to transform the European economy into the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based society, the Barcelona Summit quantified one of the available instruments to reach this ambitious objective by fixing the amount of resources which have to be devoted to r&d by 2010, at 3% of the European gdp.
What could be the implications of the Barcelona objective in terms of the main economic variables for Belgium and the eu? What are the needs for human capital to reach this objective? How are these needs covered by the current trends in the supply of qualified labour in Belgium? These are the main questions analysed in the present working paper.
The nemesis simulation allows to quantify the positive impact of the intensification in r&d efforts under the conditions of the Barcelona objective. At the macroeconomic level, it demonstrates an important positive impact on long-term economic growth, foreign trade and employment, as well as on productivity for every European country. However, at the sectoral level, structural changes occur and some sectors end up as net losers from this European common strategy.