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LIMBURG
GEOGRAPHY AND DEMOGRAPHY
Limburg is the Netherlands' southernmost province. It is bounded on the east by the German Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and on the west and south by the Belgian provinces of Limburg and Liège. Major cities are the provincial capital Maastricht and Heerlen.

Limburg is a medium-sized Dutch province. In 2000 it had a surface area of 2.153 km² , 61% being used for agriculture, 19% for nature conservation and recreation, 14% for housing and industry and 4% for traffic infrastructure. The rest, 3%, is water. The region has a population of 1.135.962 inhabitants, with a density of 528 persons per square km.

INFRASTRUCTURES
Communications in the region are very good. The province of Limburg has 220 kilometres of motorways and 510 kilometres of major dual carriageways. The motorway infrastructure is adequately laid out to connect most parts of Limburg to the Amsterdam/Rotterdam conurbation and to Brussels, Antwerp, Liège and Cologne, but there is still a gap between Venlo and the south. This gap will be closed between 2004 and 2008. From 2007 to 2012, a tunnel will be built to ease the passage of the E25 motorway through the city of Maastricht. Major dual carriageways must be extended to cope with local congestion, to alleviate traffic around towns and to improve access to neighbouring Germany.

There are 34 passenger stations on the Limburg rail network. Passenger trains depart from Venlo and Heerlen to Germany and from Maastricht to Belgium. Plans are being made to build an integrated cross-border light rail system to improve services to Aachen and Liège, from where there are high-speed passenger services to Cologne, Brussels and Paris. There are also 9 freight stations on the rail network, with freight lines to Germany from Venlo, Roermond and Heerlen and to Liège from Maastricht. There are also plans to reopen a historic line to Lanaken in Flanders. Limburg has two Trans European Inland Terminals both offering daily services to the main ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp. Venlo has road and rail facilities and Born has a road, rail and barge terminal.

Maastricht Aachen Airport, which is home to various well-known distribution companies, also serves the logistic hub at Born. In 2002 the airport recorded 4 606 departures and 4 603 arrivals, moving 312 333 passengers and 39 477 tonnes of freight. Limburg's waterways are served by eight harbours. The river Meuse and Juliana canal are being improved to make them more suitable for large barges. These waterways connect Liège to the Amsterdam/Rotterdam conurbation.

ECONOMY
The province is almost totally surrounded by Belgium and Germany and is therefore highly export-oriented. This is true for both larger companies, which account for a high proportion of Limburg's industrial sector, and small and medium-sized businesses. Exports account for a large share of turnover in various sectors: agriculture and the manufacturing and services industries are all internationally oriented. The overall export percentage is over 60%.

Large companies, which are often branches of foreign firms, play an important role in the regional economy and include NedCar, DSM, Sabic, Sphinx, Rank Xerox, Océ, Sappi and Medtronic. The biggest sectors, in which large companies are well represented, are metalworking and chemicals. In the services sector, transport and distribution play a dominant part.

With its container terminal, Europe's biggest dry port, Venlo provides 10,000 jobs in the transport sector; the companies located here include haulier Frans Maas, which operates in a large number of countries. Over 200 foreign companies have set up operations in Limburg. A further example of the province's international outlook can be found in Maastricht, which is home to a large number of international institutions and is becoming a popular venue for international conferences.

The share of manufacturing in regional production and employment in Limburg is 50% higher than the national average. The industrial landscape in Limburg is largely dominated by the chemicals and plastics industries, metalworking and mechanical engineering and the manufacture of building materials, earthenware and glass products.

In 2002 Limburg had 5.436 businesses dedicated largely to agriculture. These are active in market gardening, arable farming, cattle-rearing or pig and poultry farming and combined activities. In 2002, farmland totalled 10 638 568 acres. In 2001 0.5% of Limburg's arable land was farmed using organic methods whereas 0.6% was in the process of being converted to organic farming. Per capita GDP in relation to the European Union (EU-25) average (100) is 113.90.

LABOUR MARKET
There are 549,900 employees in the region (61.40% of the population). The unemployment rate is 5% of the active population (female rate is 5.2). The employment rate is 58.30% (male employment rate is 65.90%, while the female one is 50.80%). The percentage of total employment in services sector is 69.20%, while 23.30% work in industry sector, and only 3.40% in agricultural one.
DATA RELATED TO REGIONAL STRUCTURAL FUNDS MECHANISMS
Parts of the region, (mostly in the northern part) belong to EU objective 2 plus phasing out, for the period 2000-2006.
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
The region spends more than 2% of its GDP in Research and Development. The total amount of private investments in Research and development is 1.41%, 0.03% of Government investments and 0.42% of University investments.
DATA RELATED TO REGIONAL PROGRAMME OF INNOVATIVE ACTIONS
The RPIA was named “Limburg Innovative Actions programme” and ran during the priod 2004-2005. The total budget for the programme was Euro 1.250 million (EU - Euro 0.625 million, Public - Euro 0.575 million, Private - Euro 0.050 million ). The RPIA allowed Limburg to tackle innovative projects and activities which cannot normally be funded as part of mainstream innovation policy. It focuses on assisting pilot projects. Successful results and outcomes were incorporated into mainstream policy. In other words, the contribution this programme was to offer assistance to experimental policy actions that influence mainstream policy in the longer term and help achieve the region's development objectives earlier than might otherwise be foreseen.

The programme focused on two main objectives:

  • Objective 1: To encourage the Limburg business community, especially the SME sector to make the transition to a knowledge and innovation--based economy as successfully as possible; To improve knowledge generation in the region, by using non regular approaches; To promote knowledge transfer and co-operation among businesses and between businesses and knowledge institutions on creative matters; To stimulate co-operation at international, European and national level in a non traditional way; To increase the innovation potential of the region by experimental approaches.

  • Objective 2: To take advantage of the opportunities offered by emerging technological developments; To increase and stimulate awareness of business potential of the emerging technologies ICT, Life Sciences and Micro-technology, via new principles; To equip SMEs in order to benefit (commercially) from the use of new technologies (ICT, Life Sciences and Micro-technology), by using experimental approaches; To increase level of investment of R&D and innovation in ICT, Life Sciences and Micro-technology via different then mainstream solutions.