European Institute of Timidity

So the German Presidency of the European Union can go out in a blaze of glory: Not only has it rescued us from constitutional annihilation, but it apparently saved the European Institute of Technology, by pulling a face-saving €308 million in initial funding out of the hat earlier this week. Alas, appearances are deceiving.

While Eurofudge on the constitution will allow any government that so wishes to side-step a referendum, the need to do something – anything – to move the EIT along has produced the worst of all worlds.

The Catholic Church may have to reintroduce Limbo, because that is where the EIT is now parked. The authorised opening budget, €308 million, is neither on the scale needed to satisfy those who think something big and bold is required, nor insignificant enough for the gainsayers to quietly ignore.

As Janez Potočnik, Commissioner for Science and Research, pointed out at Science|Business’s pan European Town Hall meeting earlier this month, the problem with EIT is that nobody has actually debated the concept. Instead, the focus has been on politics and funding mechanisms.

Stars in their eyes

The EIT began, you may recall, as a starry-eyed suggestion from EU President José Manuel Barroso to create a Euro-MIT, to foster R&D collaboration between industry and academia on an American scale. The suggestion immediately raised the hackles of Europe’s leading research universities, who feared for their own grants. Then it triggered a lobbying fight over where to base it – a prize for France, Poland, Lithuania, or somewhere else. Industry stood back, at first bemused and then apathetic. Finally, the proposal emerged from a European Council meeting June 25 with a (by Brussels standards) tiny pilot authorisation of €308 million – and even that’s conditional on what will be months of argument in the European Parliament.

As Potočnik put it: “We haven’t started from the beginning of ‘What is the idea behind the EIT?’”

This is the big difficulty with the proposal that will go forward for debate in the European Parliament later this year. The proponents think that sprinkling some public money around will open up the fount of private sector funding and support.

But support for what? Who really knows the difference between a Knowledge Innovation Community, which is meant to form the basis of the EIT, and a European Technology Platform, a Joint Technology Initiative, or indeed, a regular Framework Programme research collaboration (some of the alternative species in the Brussels funding fauna)? Why would it be better to create a new European institute, rather than pump more money into the existing academic elite? How exactly will an EIT make it any easier for industry to collaborate with academics – or is it just a different place to collaborate, under a new set of perplexing rules?

Cynical is probably right

Of course, you can’t predict anything in Europolitics. It is barely possible that, in a few years, the political tide will have shifted and the EIT will be able to expand its funding and scope as its backers hope. But, political cynics as many journalists are, we at Science|Business aren’t betting on that. The next 12 months of EU political life will be dominated by two presidencies – the Portuguese and Slovenian – in which government leaders have already declared publicly their distaste for the EIT proposal. The sitting Portuguese government isn’t of Barroso’s home party, and so would relish the opportunity to embarrass him by mugging his pet project. And at a recent Brussels conference, Slovenia’s growth and jobs minister flatly labeled Barroso’s original proposal for a brick-and-mortar EIT a “monstrous” idea.

It’s time for the political clown act to end. As the EU leaders couldn’t really agree to do anything – neither fund the EIT properly nor kill it decently – they should turn their attention to the real job in academia: reform of Europe’s existing universities. They should be pushing ahead to concentrate research funding in the best research teams and institutions; to speed up the so-called Bologna reforms for a common, pan-European degree system; to reform sclerotic tenure and pension systems in academia; and to get new funding mechanisms. That means student tuition fees, corporate research contracts, and coordinated EU-wide grants systems.

The EU should put the notion of a shiny new EIT behind it and focus instead on pulling its tradition-laden institutions into the 21st century.