The Lisbon Strategy in the Wider European Context In accepting the acquis communautaire, Croatia will share the goals envisaged in the Lisbon Strategy in numerous communications and action plans. One of the areas is raising the level of R&D expenditure in the GDP of the country. The European benchmark is 3% of GDP expenditure on R&D, with two thirds coming from the private sector. With a level of 1.14% gross expenditure on R&D(GERD), Croatia is far below the EU average(1.9%) but not significantly lagging behind the new member states, and is well above the average of SEE countries. However, instead of two thirds of the expenditure coming from the private sector, Croatia has the opposite proportion. The action plan aiming to increase expenditure in the R&D sector is under preparation and it will set goals complementary to the EU Lisbon goals, but based on Croatian possibilities and needs. The goals should be defined based on realistic estimations of Croatian potentials and should include all the necessary fiscal and other measures that are likely to be needed to achieve them, together with mechanisms for monitoring the implementation. Croatia has established a national innovation system through fostering cooperation between science and industry, as well as introducing a wider national scientific and technological policy. A number of innovation initiatives are under way. In this context, the first innovation policy programme entitled “The Croatian Programme for Innovative Technological Development (HITRA)” should be mentioned, aimed at building up an efficient national innovation system through fostering cooperation between science and industry; revitalising industrial R&D; and encouraging commercialisation of research results 19 . However, statistics on innovation hardly exist in Croatia; the country is lacking benchmarks in innovation capacities to be positioned comparatively with EU countries nor are these included in the innovation databases 20 . The Croatian Institute for Technology has recently been established aiming to strengthen the“ knowledge triangle”- education, research and innovation- with the intention of becoming the leading institution in Croatia for creating and developing technological policy as a precondition for the growth of the knowledge-based society. Its activities are closely linked to the Lisbon Agenda goals and harmonised with the future role of the European Institute for Technology. The concept“one-stop-shop” has been introduced already in 2004 as a part of the programme HITRO.HR, while the EU set it as a goal to be achieved by 2007. 19. HITRA was initiated by the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports and accepted by the Government of Croatia in April 2001. 20. An example of such EU databases is the European Innovation Scoreboard. 29