Strasbourg, 26/09/2007 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday, the European Parliament gave its backing to the Commission's proposal to set up a European Institute of Technology (EIT) in its first-reading report adopted today by large majority. MEPs, however, introduced the following amendments to the Commission's initial text: 1) the name of the institution should be the “European Institute of Innovation and Technology”; 2) “knowledge and innovation communities” (KICs), partnerships of higher education institutions, research organisations, companies and other stakeholders, should be “legally autonomous from the EIT”; 3) KICs will have to abide by certain basic rules with regard to their composition (at least three partner organisations, situated in at least two different participating states and including at least one higher education institution and one private company); 4) with regard to the overall budget (€2.4 billion for the first six years, to be funded from a combination of private and public sources), the Parliament agrees with the Commission that €308.7 million should come from the Community budget (although funding could come from existing Community instruments, MEPs stress that applications from KICs should in no way be privileged over other applications; furthermore, funds stemming from those programmes should not finance establishment and administration costs directly associated with the EIT or the KICs but rather the mobility of researchers or research programmes); 5) there should be a “pilot phase”: at the latest two years after the regulation establishing the EIT comes into force, the Governing Board would select two or three KICs “in areas that help the EU to face today's and tomorrow's challenges”; 6) the EIT could select additional KICs after the adoption of its first “Strategic Innovation Agenda” (SIA), a concept also introduced by the EP (this SIA should identify the EIT's long-term strategic areas “in fields of key potential economic and societal interest which are likely to generate the greatest innovation added value”; the EIT would have to draw up an SIA by the end of 2011 at the latest and thereafter every seven years - acting on a proposal from the Commission, the Parliament and Council will then adopt this agenda); 7) MEPs rejected the Commission's proposal for the EIT itself to award degrees and diplomas, instead, they asked for an EIT mark to be added to qualifications awarded through the higher education institutions within the KICs.
The Greens group voted against the report, after their amendment calling for a vote against the Commission proposals was rejected. “We are against the idea of deluding the public since the EIT will not be able to do anything apart from paying its employees,” said Monica Frassoni, group Deputy Leader. Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the other deputy leader, was ironic about the statements from Commission President José Manuel Durão Barroso, who had compared the future EIT with the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a US research institution and university specialising in science and technology. However, he argued for “genuine coordination of research” at European level. David Hammerstein compared the current proposal to a “pointless white elephant”. Criticising the low level of funding earmarked for setting up the EIT, he said that the Greens had supported the initial proposal, but could not give their backing to the final text which, they felt, lacked the vision to create a truly effective institute. Angelika Niebler (EPP-ED, Germany), a supporter of the EIT, said that the section on funding still had to be clarified. She felt, however, that the Commission's new proposal, presented last week, provided a solid base for the Parliament and member states to work on (on 19 September, the Commission proposed revising the multi-annual financial framework for 2007-2013 to guarantee the funding of Galileo and the EIT). (il)