One of the axes of the renewed Lisbon Strategy is to ensure that knowledge and innovation become the driving of European integration. In the Lisbon process, the innovation challenge should be raised at different levels: European, national, regional and local. The uneven development of high tech services shows the strong diversity of regional situations in the European Union. The map is based on the regional level NUTS2-3 chosen by OECD and by the authors of the historical economic database of European regions (IGEAT, 2008). It provides a much better view of territorial dynamics of economy than official levels NUTS2 (too large) or NUTS3 (too heterogeneous).

 

• The first map on the share of high tech services in the value added of the production puts stresses a moderate thrust of these services in the regions of Central and Eastern Europe and in the Iberian Peninsula in 1995, except in metropolitan regions (Lisboa, Madrid, Budapest, Warszawa, …).
• The second map shows the contrasted evolution of high tech services in total value added. A strong heterogeneity characterizes high tech services between a striking increase in the Romanian and Latvian regions and the most a reduced increase into the Bulgarian and Greek regions. The share of high tech services is generally increasing in the most advanced regions of North-Western Europe.
• Therefore, a slight convergence can be analysed. The growth rate from 1995 to 2004 has globally an inverse relation with the level of 1995.