EU President Barroso’s dream (see European Business Magazine May-June 2006) to compete the famous US’ Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) by starting the European Institute for Technology (EIT) is not backed by industry and national governments.
Although German Chancellor, a qualified scientist, is backing Barroso’s ambitious idea, she is skeptical about establishing a new big central structure for research in Europe.
The original idea was to fuse academic and business research to give the US an edge over the EU. An idea developed in line with the EU Lisbon Strategy to make the EU economy the most competitive in the world. In September Barroso said, that industry would ‘play a key role in the project – by defining the strategic agenda; by participating in integrated partnerships between universities, research organisations and industries; and by contributing to the funding’ of the EIT.
At the end of October, Barroso is scrambling for budget as the EU member states and European industry refuse to endorse the project. Barroso had anticipated €800 million of funding by European business, but now he has to accept that there will be no money at all from that side. His spokesman surprised with telling ‘we did not expect industries to contribute from the beginning’ …
There is fear that an EIT will clash with the European Research Council (ERC), that was created in 2005 by Lord Patten, ex-EU commissioner and chancellor of Oxford University. But also European scientists take a negative view of the proposed new institute. ‘It could be another layer of the Brussels’ bureaucracy and spread funding too thinly’, said Peter Cotgrave, director of Campaign for Science and Engineering. But in the opinion of the European Commission, the EIT will be complementary to the ERC, and is not an alternative to it.
Now, the entire €2,4 billion EIT budget for 2008-2013 will come from existing EU funds. The total EU budget for the same period is €862 billion!
