Technological Sovereignty: Legal Mechanisms for the Development of High-Tech Industry Discussed at the SPILF

The Technopolis Moscow Special Economic Zone has become a center of attraction for the capital's high-tech industries, providing its residents with not just tax preferences, but comprehensive support tools, which contributes to the formation of new industries in the country.

The session "Technological Sovereignty: Legal mechanisms for the development of industry and Innovation" was held on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum. Representatives of federal and metropolitan authorities, special economic zones, and leading Russian enterprises discussed legal and practical mechanisms for achieving technological sovereignty, the federal concept of technological development, experimental legal regimes (EPR) for testing innovations, and the role of state corporations in implementing long-term projects.

As noted by Anastasia Lukina, moderator of the discussion, Head of the Legal Department of the Moscow Department of Investment and Industrial Policy, today the industrial industry is facing the task of moving from simple localization of production to the creation of its own end-to-end technologies. At the same time, legal regulation is the foundation of technological sovereignty, and the work of legislators is a necessary "safety cushion" for innovation. However, in order for legal instruments to become a driver for technological leadership, it is necessary to synchronize business initiatives and government strategies.

Anton Gusev, Director of the National Project Support Department at Rosatom Technological Development, emphasized that technological sovereignty is realized through clear planning and prioritization, while working on such projects inevitably involves high risks.

"Of course, high—tech products are always a high-risk project, because these projects are long-term, complex, and require a large number of competencies, technologies, and production facilities. That is why it is more important than ever to consolidate the efforts of scientific organizations, industrial enterprises and the state in order to form a full life cycle of development, commissioning and sale of such products," Anton Gusev added.

The Technopolis Moscow Special Economic Zone has become a center of attraction for the capital's high-tech industries, providing its residents with not just tax preferences, but comprehensive support tools, which contributes to the formation of new industries in the country.

"Our main priority is to attract and localize those industries that did not exist in the country before. Such enterprises inevitably entail the creation of related industries, which simply did not exist in the country before. In other words, we are getting not one new company, but a whole chain of new directions for the economy," said Vasily Zhukov, Deputy General Director of Technopolis Moscow SEZ JSC.

In terms of procurement activities, Technopolis Moscow is actively implementing its own local mechanisms to effectively support domestic producers. In addition, when creating high-tech collective use centers in the SEZ, they primarily focus on Russian-made equipment.

Another area that allows us to provide support for goods from Russian manufacturers is the product catalog of SEZ residents. The digital platform is a showcase where more than 23 categories of goods from different fields (more than six thousand items) are available electronically, including robotics, machine tool manufacturing, instrumentation, microelectronics, photonics, 3D technologies and others. Denis Vokhmyanin, Head of the Contract Service of the Technopolis Moscow SEZ, stressed that the catalog contains comprehensive information about goods produced in the SEZ, which significantly speeds up the formation of procurement documentation.

Dmitry Kolomiets, Deputy Director General for Cooperation with the authorities of the St. Petersburg SEZ, in turn, noted that it is impossible to unlock the full potential of special economic zones without systematic cooperation, including between residents.

Interregional cooperation between the leading SEZs of the technical and innovation type will make it possible to form stable value chains focused on import substitution and the achievement of technological sovereignty. For example, microelectronics, which is manufactured in Moscow, can become the basis for devices and systems manufactured in St. Petersburg. St. Petersburg's expertise in instrument engineering and power engineering can complement Moscow's developments in new materials, photonics, and medical equipment.