Crossing the finishing line

After a long struggle, Europe deserves to finally have its own dedicated innovation institute, says Reino Paasilinna

In February parliament approved with a large majority in its second reading the council’s common position on the European institute of innovation and technology (EIT), nearly three years after the idea for the EIT was first announced by the commission president José Manuel Barroso. There are two main reasons why it took such a long time to reach an agreement that is acceptable for us and the council.

The first one is that the original idea had to be re-worked in a fundamental way. The concept of a European super-university, a sort of a ‘European MIT’, is now gone. Researchers will not be recruited by the EIT but they will remain to be employed by their host universities or research institutions. Similarly, the EIT will not award degrees or diplomas; this will remain the exclusive right of higher education institutions. The EIT will still work with all aspects of the ‘knowledge triangle’, education, research and innovation but the focus will be on the latter.

There is a very simple reason why the focus should be on innovations; the EU is not very good at it. We produce some of the best research in the world, but often do not know how to capitalise on our knowledge. One example is the fact that the European patent office receives more patent applications from the US than from the EU itself. Lack of innovations is the EU’s Achilles’ heel and that is why my report on the EIT emphasises the role of innovations.

The EIT will have light network structure instead of a central campus. A small administration will be based in one site, but the actual operation of the EIT will be carried out by autonomous knowledge and innovation communities (KICs). These pan-European partnerships of universities, R&D intensive private enterprises and the public sector will aim to create new innovative commercial products and services. The idea is to have the first KICs operational by 2010 and it is thus too early to say what they will focus on. However, the compromise agreed with the council says in a document that “two to three KICs [will work] in areas that help the EU to face current and future challenges, which could include, inter alia, such fields as climate change, renewable energy and the next generation of information and communication technologies”.

As so often, money was another important obstacle in reaching a compromise. In fact, getting an agreement required an amendment to the inter-institutional agreement on the multi-annual financial framework. The final result is not perfect, since budget margins for certain community funding instruments did not remain untouched, but it has to be remembered that that the budget deal was part of a larger compromise package that included the Galileo satellite programme.

The topics I have mentioned were just the key issues among numerous changes that were made to the proposal. Essential for the process was the excellent co-operation we had with both the German and the Portuguese presidencies. With the commission we had some difficulties in the beginning, but eventually they took a constructive role and helped us to reach a compromise.

I believe that the changes we have made have been to the right direction and this is reflected in the positive feedback that we have got both from the private sector and the academia. Universities in particular were very much against the original commission proposal but gradually – as we have improved the model – more and more higher education institutions have started to become interested.

It would be pointless to deny that the EIT overlaps with certain existing community instruments, such as competitiveness and innovation programme and the framework programme for research. However, I believe that there is still room for a new community R&D instrument, especially because of the innovation gap that persists between us and some of our main rivals. The EIT will bring added value to the European field of innovation, education and research but only a pilot phase and an evaluation will tell us if the model is good enough to have a permanent place in the European research area.