EIT: Business awaits concrete proposals[fr][de] 

"Businesses will come along with money once concrete proposals for projects for the Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KIC) are on the table," said Pierre Simon, the president of Eurochambres at a round-table discussion on the European Institute of Technology (EIT) on 29 May 2007. Eurochambres represents more than 19 million large and small enterprises in Europe. 

The EIT project has been under constant fire since it was proposed by the Commission president José Manuel Barroso in 2005 and none of the stakeholders has yet offered unconditional support.  

"The success of the EIT relies on its capacity to attract private investors. The sooner the details of the EIT and its functioning, objectives and deliverables are clear, the sooner the business community will invest," states a Eurochambres press release.

"Businesses will get involved in the EIT if the institute selects attractive themes, if it is independent, has ambitious goals, world-class brand and reputation, flexible IPR and secured political support," added Günter Baumann, vice-president of the German chamber of commerce.

Wilfried Kraus, chairman of the Council's working group on EIT, explained the latest developments on the dossier and said that "significant progress" had been made during recent months. He believes that a compromise on the basis of the German Presidency proposal will be reached before 11 June and a principal agreement by the Competitiveness Council of 25 June 2007, as there is an "impressive support for the two-stage approach proposal of the German presidency. Member states, the Parliament and the Commission back it."

The two-stage approach proposed by the German Presidency foresees, in the first phase (2008-2012), the nomination by the Commission, in consultation with Council and the Parliament, of four people in charge of nominating the 15-person governing board (GB). The GB would then be allowed to bring forward proposals for one, two or three KICs within 24 months, and would also have until 2012 to deliver a strategic innovation agenda, which would need to be approved by the Council and the Parliament. If approved, the GB could then propose further KICs. If not, no additional KICs would be established and the existing KICs would stay as they are. The second phase, corresponding to the growth of the EIT, could thus begin at the earliest by 2013.

However, "the budget is still an open question and if the Commission doesn't find a solution on the budget then we will not have an EIT," said Kraus, urging the Commission to come up with a viable proposal on the financing of the planned €2.4 billion budget for 2008-2013. He also said that "discussions have shown that industry finds 50% participation as too much and it more likely to expect some 20-30% financial contribution from the industry for financing KICs in a couple of years".

Another issue under discussion is to decide whether or not to mark the thematic priorities (climate change, energy efficiency, nanotechnologies etc) of the EIT in the regulation. The Parliament would like these to be written down, whereas the German Presidency argues that the choice of themes should be left to an independent governing board. "KICs need a lot of autonomy and they need to be able to work without influence from the EU institutions," said Kraus.