Competitive trade advantage of EC nations as a function of their science and technology production?

High technology is not a well-defined issue in economics. In this paper, it is divided into very high R&D-intensive, so called "leading-edge", and "high-level" technology, i. e. above-avarage R&D-intensive products. The similarity of exports and imports in both subdivisions of high technology is compared between the EC countries, whereby a structured trade competition map of Europe is found. By linking trade data on high technology with other indicators of disembodied knowledge, such as scientific publications and patents, it is shown that very R&D-intensive competition needs more science inputs than does high-level technology. As industrial property expressed by patents is an important prerequisite for above-average R&D-intensive trade, less so for leading-edge technology, the policy conclusions point to the importance of non-uniformity in high tech Europe.