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New European Initiatives and Tools: HORIZON 2020 is now on the Horizon

FELIX MÜLLER, EVONIK

Member of Household and Personal Care Today’s
Scientific Advisory Board
The old continent is in trouble. Still, the Euro crisis is pending, and the figures for a lot of industries are not encouraging, in many fields Europe already lost its traditional leadership in manufacture. The Chemical Industry is not yet in this position. With a global market share of 24 %, the European Chemical Industry is still a global leader in process technology, however with ever increasing pressure from other regions threatening the lead technology innovation position. For keeping this position, it is one of the key issues to invest in education of our citizens to ensure the intellectual capacity is maintained within the region Europe. As history has taught, loosing the intellectual capacity invariably leads to a move in manufacturing capacity and the associated loss of employment. At the same time the growing world population and higher living standards globally lead to a surge in demand on natural resources. The world population will likely increase by 2.5 billion over the next 40 years to a total of 9.2 billion in 2050. This growth will generate billions of new customers with a strong demand for an improved standard of living and thus significantly increased consumption ...