However, de Nazelle stressed that the EIT’s role is to provide seed funding for research groups – known as Knowledge Innovation Communities (KICs). He said it was more important to look at how money is used rather than focus on the level of funding available.
The institute, which now expects to be fully operational in Budapest by April 2010, is designed to foster partnerships between business and academia, and should create new business for large companies, SMEs and start-ups.
It launched its first call for KICs in April and will initially focus on bringing together innovators in the fields of climate change, energy efficiency and information society (EurActiv 3/4/09).
The KICs will have a minimum lifecycle of seven years but can run for up to 15 years. Around €100 million per year will be made available for KICs, with 25% of funding coming from the EIT and the remainder being drawn from existing funding programmes, and university and industrial sponsorship.
“However, it’s is not about accessing new money, but doing things differently. The EIT is initially supposed to seed money, to spend money for the selected KICs to help them organize themselves. So if you want people to move on and relocate, you need to seed the amount of money,” he said.
“Then there is nothing more successful and contagious then success. The EIT is small but sometimes small things can have an impact, as the droplets that make the water overflow,” de Nazelle said.
The institute is now recruiting staff to help run its operations, which de Nazelle said is developing well. He paid tribute to the Hungarian authorities and EU executive for their cooperative approach to setting up the institute’s headquarters.
De Nazelle described the EIT as “an experiment” and said that while there was a risk of failure, he was confident it would be a success. He acknowledged the level of financing available from the EU budget was “limited” to €309, but said the EIT board was working on ways to attract business funding
Gérard de Nazelle was speaking to Kalmár Szilvia of EurActiv Hungary
