Timeline for EIT emerges

The European Commission's Director-General for Education, Odile Quintin, has given the most detailed timeline yet for the planned new European Institute of Technology.

Speaking at a debate organised in Brussels by Science|Business and software company SAS on 20 November, she said that the aim was for the institute to open for business at the start of the university year 2009/2010.

Quintin was confident that the German presidency would be able to deliver on its pledge to gain political agreement on the project by the time its reign ends on 30 June next year. Certainly, there was a consensus at the Lahti summit earlier this year that it should go quickly – although a big stumbling block is the location, which is not yet agreed.

She identified one of the problems with European research as the lack of critical mass, and said that the European Institute of Technology could help to create it. Without the critical mass it was hard to attract investment, she said, adding that there was a "lack of a culture of risk" in Europe.

Quintin stressed that the EIT would be a partnership, a facilitator. "We don't see the EIT either as a competitor to the MIT or as a funding response to our difficulties," she said. It would have a limited EU financial support, and then attract partnerhsip from business. In that sense, she said, it would be seeking to imitate the networking that she identified as an element of the US's success.

Finally, she said, the governing board of the EIT would consist solely of academics and industry, who would decide strategy autonomously. It was, she said, a "new model of governance". "No nice bureaucrats like me, no member states, no European Parliament," she promised.