The Basque Country is to invest €552 million in nanotechnology to the year 2015, with the Basque authorities putting up around 40 per cent, i.e. € 223 million of the total. By 2015, the authorities want to see more than 100 Basque firms exploiting nanotechnology in products and processes, doubling the number in the following five years and generating 700 new skilled jobs to 2015 and then a further 500 in the following five years.

Today some 80 companies in the region, half of them located in Guipúzcoa, work in micro and nanotechnologies. Most Basque firms involved in nanotechnology are developing applications that are expected to be on the market fairly shortly, almost all of them involving sensors or material coverings and coatings. Current activity is concentrating largely on R&D projects.

Apart from generally promoting nanosciences in business circles in the region, the Basque government Department of Industry is also planning to set up the nanoBasque Agency, through regional development agency SPRI. The idea is to increase competitive levels in Basque industry while accelerating the diversification process towards knowledge-intensive sectors.
 
Like many other parts of the world, the Basque Country has been working towards the nanosciences and nanotechnology for some years. Scientific and business progress in the region in these two fields already suggest that scientific, technological and business skills are moving in the right direction and that levels there may be considered satisfactory.

Basically, the nanoBasque strategy seeks to create a new industrial, business and science model in the Basque Country facilitated by nanotechnology. So the ideal is a results-oriented, diversified, outward-looking production model that is connected, robust, coherent, competitive and sustainable.