Brussels, 11/03/2008 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 11 March, the European Parliament adopted the Council common position on the establishment of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) which should be able to begin work this summer. After informal talks, an agreement had been reached with the Council on a compromise taking into account the points highlighted by the Parliament during its first reading. The report by Reino Paasilinna (PES, Finland) was approved by a large majority, as the Parliament was unable to follow the opinion of the Greens/EFA Group which had submitted an amendment aimed at rejecting the common position (129 votes in favour, 496 against and 15 abstentions), considering that the institute was unable to operate with the budget earmarked for it. “The compromise stresses the role of innovation. Innovation is where we really have to catch up”, Mr Paasilinna stressed. European Commission President José Manuel Barroso welcomed this “decisive step towards the creation of the EIT”. He was the first to have evoked the creation of the EIT during the mid-term review of Lisbon strategy in 2005.
The EIT will have a two-tier structure with a governing board and “knowledge and innovation communities” (KICs). The governing board will have the task of selecting higher education institutions, research organisations, companies and other stakeholders to form these autonomous partnerships, the KICs. Each KIC should consist of at least three partner organisations, situated in at least two different member states and including at least one higher education institution and one private company. Within eighteen months after the EIT is established, a first set of two or three KICs will be selected in areas that represent the greatest challenges for the European Union such as climate change, renewable energy and the next generation of information and communication technologies. Other KICs will then be selected after the adoption of the first “strategic innovation agenda” (SIA), which is the policy document outlining the priority fields of the EIT for future initiatives. The first programme is to be drawn up by 30 June 2011 at the latest, and every seven years thereafter. Following the opinion of the Commission, the Parliament considers that the institute will require a budget of €2.4 billion for six years financed by public and private resources. On 18 December 2007, the Parliament and Council agreed to revise the multiannual 2007-2013 financial framework in order to ensure funding for Galileo and the EIT, and to provide €308.7 million from the Community budget for the EIT. As far as the next stages are concerned, the Commission established, in early February, an identification committee which is to nominate the 18 experts for the EIT's first governing board in June (see EUROPE 9596). The committee has launched an open consultation on the key criteria to be taken into consideration to this end. The Council must now decide, perhaps by June, on the place where the governing board is to be established. Some MEPs had proposed in first reading that the Polish town of Wroclaw should be considered for this, or the Hungarian capital, Budapest, or Munich in Germany. The Austrian capital, Vienna, then put its candidature forward. During the debate that preceded the vote at second reading, two members of the ALDE Group, Jorgo Chatzimarkakis (of Germany) and Lena Eik (of Sweden) suggested the buildings of the Parliament in Strasbourg could be a suitable location. (I.L.)