Parliament backs European Institute of Technology[fr][de] 

The Parliament endorsed, on 26 September 2007, the Commission's proposal for establishing a European Institute of Technology. Green MEPs, however, despite supporting the original idea, voted against the proposal, saying that it lacked a realistic budget and was poorly defined. 

"We believe no EIT would be better than an ill-conceived and under-funded EIT," said Green MEP David Hammerstein, referring to the institute as "a pointless white elephant". Meanwhile, French MEP Dominique Vlasto [EPP-ED] expressed her concern about the EIT becoming "just another EU agency".

In its first-reading report , the plenary backed its Industry and Research Committee's plea to rename the EIT the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, so as better to reflect its primary focus. The MEPs also voted for the institute to be established, as initially proposed by the German Presidency, only after a pilot phase in which two or three Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) had run projects to test the feasibility of such an institute.

The MEPs also recommended that every KIC should consist of at least three partner organisations, located in at least two different participating states and including at least one higher-education institution and one private company.

Regarding the budget issue, the MEPs agreed with the Commission that €308.7 million of the expected total funding of some €2.4 billion between 2008-2013 should come from the Community budget. They noted that the long-awaited Commission proposal on where to take that money from the EU budget, published on 19 September 2007, was now "the basis for further negotiations between Parliament and Council".

The Commission proposed last week to revise the EU's long-term budget for 2007-2013 in order to ensure the funding for EIT and Galileo, another ailing EU project. If accepted by the EU-27 finance ministers, the €308.7 million would come through an increase of the ceiling of heading 1A [competitiveness]. The amount dedicated to the EIT would increase from €3 million in 2008 to €30 million in 2010 and €127 million in 2013.

The Commission expects that the remaining €2.1bn will be generated from the partners involved in the KICs, in part through EU's Framework Research Programme (FP7), regional funds, member-state funding and partners' own money.

The Council will now examine the proposal and formulate, this Autumn, a common position, which could then be voted on in an early second reading in the Parliament. First call for proposal for KICs could be launched in Summer 2008, at the earliest.