All citizens and organisations are welcome to contribute to this consultation. Contributions are particularly sought from research organisations and associations of research organisations, universities and associations of universities, public authorities (including regional and local administrations), local communities, large businesses, small or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), business associations, inter-governmental organisations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and individual citizens, which are stakeholders in energy and transport sectors but also from those that are stakeholders in the industry, agriculture/bioeconomy and construction sectors.

The objective of this public consultation is to collect the opinions of stakeholders and interested parties, including EU citizens and private and public organisations, with regard to the development of a comprehensive research, innovation and competitiveness strategy for the Energy Union, as the fifth pillar of the Energy Union.

This aspect is particularly important given the objective to drastically reduce EU’s emissions and use of energy, while at the same time maintaining the competitiveness of economic sectors including energy and transport but also industry, agriculture/bioeconomy and construction, and providing modern, user-friendly, safe, sustainable and secure solutions to EU citizens and businesses. In this sense, this strategy will provide an important element to contribute from the EU perspective to the Paris Agreement achieved on last 12 December 2015 as the outcome of Conference of Parties (COP21) under the United Nations Framework Climate Change Convention (http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/l09r01.pdf .

An overarching Integrated Energy Union Research, Innovation and Competitiveness Strategy is essential in order to ensure that the overall goals are not lost in the trade-offs between the individual sectors.

How to submit your contribution

• If you are answering this consultation as a citizen, please click here to submit your contribution.
• If you are answering this consultation on behalf of an organisation, please click here to submit your contribution.
• If you are answering this consultation on behalf of a public authority, please click here to submit your contribution.

Depending on the detail of your answers, you may want to reserve 30 minutes for completing the questionnaire.
The maximum time to complete the questionnaire allowed by the system is 90 minutes. Partial responses will not be saved. This means once you start filling in the questionnaire, you have to answer all compulsory questions to submit your response.

The contributions will be analysed by the European Commission. A short summary report on the consultation including a complete analysis of the replies will be published by 30 Sept 2016.