Barroso’s big bet

Politicians are great gamblers. But even by their normal standards, the stakes are rising high in a game being played now over the creation of a European Institute of Technology.

Consider the performance Monday evening here, at a conference on innovation policy, by European Commission President José Manuel Barroso.

It was he who, in early 2006, proposed the creation of a new, EU-run institute in the mould of such successful US universities as Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His suggestion was intended to help bridge the gap between academic research and industry in Europe, but it succeeded in annoying just about everybody with a stake in the issue: European academics who don’t want a new competitor, national politicians who don’t want Brussels meddling in education, and multinational executives who don’t want to be pan-handled for yet another public-private partnership they can’t control.

No backing down

But Barroso refused to back down – and over the past year has spent an extraordinary amount of political capital to force the idea ahead. Result: the proposal is now scheduled to come up for decision in June. But what will that decision be?

According to Barroso, speaking at a conference organised by Friends of Europe, it will be positive. “I expect we will see a political decision by the end of June, and the launch of the first [research project] very soon,” he declared.

But, as indicated earlier by EU Education Commissioner Ján Figel – the point man on the issue – the proposal now on the table is very different from that a year ago. Far from an MIT clone, the EIT will be a virtual institution with a small staff that manages, for now, just one pilot research project in energy. It will have no guarantee of continued funding beyond that.

The money moves around

And despite the president’s show of confidence, there remains a lot of back-room negotiation to be completed before he can declare victory. Poland, for instance, has offered to host the new institute – with a dowry of  €1 billion in EU structural funds. And industry, which is being asked to co-fund it, has yet to write any cheques.

In fact, one of the ironies of the Monday session was the presence, on the same podium with Barroso, of Jeroen van de Veer, CEO of Royal Dutch Shell. He proclaimed that “I fully agree with the president: the EIT can play a key role” in making Europe more innovative. But the real news was in what he didn’t state: a public pledge of money from Shell.

No matter. As any high-roller knows: nothing ventured, nothing gained. By predicting success publicly, with so much still to be resolved in the background, Barroso was betting his own political prestige on a communiqué being approved in June with the letters EIT in the headline. This being Brussels rather than Las Vegas, it seems unlikely anyone will call his bluff.