Polish city still hopeful of EIT success

WROCLAW - Poland’s fourth largest city Wroclaw still hopes to become the host of the European institute for innovation and technology, despite widespread support for Budapest, city leaders said on Monday.

Speaking at a forum for journalists hosted by the Central European Initiative, Wroclaw mayor Rafal Dutkiewicz said that the city still had a good chance of beating the Hungarian capital Budapest when the decision is made on 18 June.

EU research ministers had been expected to agree on Budapest as the seat of the EIT headquarters at an informal meeting last week, but Poland was the only voice in opposition, inevitably postponing the final decision. 

The Polish town has set its sights on being the host of the EIT since the very moment the idea was first mooted by commission president José Manuel Barroso as a means of boosting confidence in the EU following the rejection of the constitution in 2005.

Dukiewicz told the forum that more than €5bn of EU funding had been spent on restoring the city’s former academic glory – its university dates back to 1702 – and on boosting its business capacity following the fall of communism.

“Within two years of joining the EU, we had created 120,000 new jobs,” he said. “In a city whose population numbers just 650,000 that is a large proportion.”

He explained that the city had used the concept of the EIT as the basis for its own development – bringing together business, research and academia to help stimulate innovation and the local economy.

ICT, biotechnology, nanotechnology and basic research have been the main focus of the strategy, dubbed EIT Plus.

Witold Sobkow of the Polish foreign ministry, also speaking at the forum, stressed that the central government was 100 per cent behind the Wroclaw bid.

“Wroclaw would be an excellent host for the EIT,” he said. “It is a world class innovation-centred city.”

But the desire among ministers to give the EIT to a new member state that does not already host an EU executive agency counts against Wroclaw: Poland already hosts the EU border agency Frontex.

The other candidate cities – Vienna, which put forward a joint bid with Bratislava, Sant Cugat del Vallès in Catalonia, Spain, and Jena in Germany – have also fallen foul of this unofficial criterion.

Despite the bullishness in Wroclaw and its undoubted credentials as a more than competent host for the EIT, the Polish government will be under increasing pressure to bow to the majority support for Budapest - not least because the EIT managing board is expected to be nominated by the end of June or early July.

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