The European Commission, within the Europe 2020 flagship Innovation Union, has presented three new Innovation Partnerships which have as main aim to address weaknesses, bottlenecks and obstacles in the European research and innovation system that prevent or slow down good ideas being developed and brought to market. In particular, new proposals will work on raw materials, agriculture and healthy ageing.

The three new Innovation Partnerships presented by the European Commission intends to boost the European competitiveness through the public and private investment. Its objective is, therefore, to face key challenges facing European society, in areas that are crucial to growth and jobs: the supply of raw materials, sustainable agriculture, and active and healthy ageing. The Innovation Partnerships is a new concept introduced by the flagship initiative "Innovation Union" in October 2010.

The first one, the Innovation partnership seeks to overcome Europe's raw materials shortages. According to the Commission, the proposals are addressed to increase Europe's own production with joint innovation efforts that will support exploration, extraction and processing of raw materials. In addition, it has been also proposed an innovation partnership for agriculture, which will face the key challenge for agriculture in future that is not only to produce more, but also to do this in a sustainable manner. Finally, the European Innovation Partnership on active and healthy ageing seeks solutions for one of the most serious challenges facing Europe today. The number of European citizens aged 65 and over will double over the next 50 years. While this presents a specific challenge for European care and social systems, it is also an opportunity to redesign these systems in the interest of patients, healthcare systems and the innovative industry.

The European Innovation Partnerships take a new approach to tackling the whole research-development-innovation chain, bringing together public and private stakeholders across borders and sectors in order to accelerate the uptake of innovation. They each have an ambitious target to reach by 2020, and are expected to start delivering results within 1-3 years.