The coordination of national Research and innovation (R&I) activities within the European Union: towards convergence of national R&I policies?

Fostering Research and Innovation caught European political leaders' attention for making the EU more competitive and sustainable. For reaching such an ambitious target, coordination between national R&I policies, and then policy convergence, is strongly needed. This research aims to analyze the impact of those coordination efforts on convergence of national R&I policies. To these ends, the focus has been put on one policy instrument for raising R&I, public procurement, and particularly public “procurement of innovation”. A large amount of literature has been scanned in order to establish an appropriate theoretical framework, referring to the fusion theory combined with the Policy networks approach. The results of this analysis will help to pin point which factors undermine and which items which items foster the reach of a policy convergence outcome as well as allowing the drawing of recommendations for improving those efforts.