After the Parliament's Industry Committee, in late February 2008, approved the Council's common position on the EIT, the regulation was finally adopted in the House by second reading on 11 March. The institute is expected to start work towards its establishment this summer.
MEP and Parliament rapporteur Reino Paasilinna qualified the compromise between the Council and the Parliament "a success for Parliament" as it "stresses the role of innovation". "Too often, our brilliant students and researchers do not reap the rewards of their work simply because there is no one to help them turn research results into commercial products," he said.
Meanwhile, the Commission is urging the member states to reform their national higher education systems in a drive to bring business and academia closer together to achieve quicker transfer of research into innovation in services and products.
Once the EIT is established, the first Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) on climate change, renewable energy and next-generation information and communication technologies (ICTs) are expected to be established within eighteen months. If operations begin in summer 2008, the first KICs could see the light of day by 2010.
Even if the major topics of the new institute generally appear environmentally friendly, Green MEPs voted against the whole proposal. They qualified the plans, which were originally put forward by Commission President Barroso, as "lofty" and called the agreed budget a "joke".
"While the Greens supported the original plans for an EIT, the initiative has degenerated into a farce: poorly defined and lacking a realistic, workable budget," explained MEP David Hammerstein his Party's decision to vote against the report. "We believe no EIT would be better than an ill-conceived and under-funded EIT," he added.
According to the original Commission proposal, 2.3 billion euro would have been necessary for the creation of six KICs. The compromise proposal, however, foresees the creation of just "two or three" KICs as the Commission's contribution, 308 million euro, is the only concrete project money earmarked for the EIT.
Contrary to the MIT, the European institute will not resemble a university in a specific geographic location, but will instead be a virtual network of universities, companies and other stakeholders expected to form the KICs. Each KIC must have at least three partner organisations, based in two or more member states. At least one of these partners must be a university and at least one a private company.
Commission President Barroso said he was "delighted" that the EIT is becoming a reality and predicted that it would become "an important feature of Europe's research and innovation landscape," facilitating and enhancing cooperation between the worlds of business, research and higher education across the EU.
