It had been expected that a unanimous agreement on the seat of the EIT would be reached by ministers during an informal dinner on 29 May and formally adopted at an Intergovernmental Conference the following day. However, Poland refused to back the candidacy of Budapest, Hungary, as the host of the new high-tech innovation institute, dsepite approval from the 26 other member states.
According to Council sources, the real reason behind the veto is that Polish minister did not have the mandate to "accept the failure" and is in fact more linked to Poland's internal politics than anything else. Indeed, the mayor and city of Wroclaw are very influential vis-à-vis the government and the city had been lobbying long and hard to host the EIT.
Wroclaw also thought that getting to host the EIT would compensate for the fact that the city recently lost the race to host the 2012 International Exhibition (EXPO 2012), which will take place in South Korea, a Council source told EurActiv.
Research ministers have agreed to return to Brussels on 18 June to take the final decision during an Intergovernmental Conference. The Slovenian Minister for Higher Education, Science and Technology Mojca Kucler Dolinar insisted that "there is consensus on selection criteria" of the seat.
The future host of the EIT seat will namely be one of the new member states "which doesn't have already a site or an EU agency," she specified. Only one of the five candidates, Budapest, fits these conditions. Poland already hosts Frontex, the EU border security agency, and the three others, Sant Cugat del Valles near Barcelona, Vienna-Bratislava and Jena (Germany) are not new member states.
"Every day without a seat of the EIT is a day lost because it prevents us from focusing on setting out the first science and innovation community," said Kucler Dolinar.
Indeed, as the members of the EIT governing board are expected to be appointed at the end of June or early July, they will need a place to start their work. Furthermore, according to the final Regulation establishing the EIT, once the Governing Board is established, it needs to select and designate two or three Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) within a period of 18 months, thus by the end of 2009.
