The European Institute of Technology

Written by Andrew Duff MEP and published in ft.com on Tue 7th Mar 2006

The next meeting of the European Council, on 23-24 March, is to try to resuscitate the 'Lisbon agenda' on European competitiveness and sustainable wealth creation. In front of the EU leaders will be a proposal from the European Commission to set up a European Institute of Technology (EIT) alongside a new European Research Council (ERC). The Commission sees these as twin key elements of its strategy to get Europe buzzing as a knowledge economy.

According to the Commission, the Institute is to be a 'new flagship for excellence'. The EIT will bring 'a fresh approach to bridging the gap between science and society', acting 'as a reference model to inspire and guide long term change'. President Barroso admits he borrows his concept directly from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), arguing cogently enough that Europe lags behind the US in developing the virtuous 'knowledge triangle' of education, research and innovation.

The Commission is right not be complacent about the state of European higher education. The respected Shanghai world academic ranking finds that the EU hosts only eight of the top fifty research universities (five of them British). The scientific brain drain away from Europe towards America and, increasingly, the Far East continues. If the trend is to be reversed, European science and technology has to be made more obviously useful to business and society. An EIT that could persuade industry to invest long-term in quantum physics or that could develop business expertise in combating climate change would be valuable indeed.

The Commission has properly identified both supply and demand measures that are needed to intensify the interaction between science and industry. Higher salaries for seconded academics will be particularly popular, as will the idea of concentrating resources on a small number of elite university faculties and research institutes bound together in specialised 'knowledge communities' for up to fifteen years. The EIT will be more node than network. A central governing body will award post-graduate degrees to those of its students who have learned how to research. One hopes that the EIT will drive European academia towards thoroughly practical, widely intelligible outcomes. The Institute should itself be able to pick up good ideas which single universities are too small or poor to develop on their own. There could also be a useful role for an enterprising EIT in fashioning improvements to Europe's intellectual property regime.

The European Council and, thereafter, the European Parliament should greet the EIT. There will be academic jealousies as well as national preferences to overcome if success is to be assured. Funding from the EU budget as well as sponsorship from the private sector will have to be generous. The Commission, which mentions no figures so far, proposes that the EIT would itself apply for project funding from the ERC. But the miserly financial settlement for overall R&D now proposed by the European Council for 2007-13 undermines confidence. Mr Barroso should remind the European Council that in 2005 MIT enjoyed a budget of over $ 2 billion.

There will also be a row about where the EIT is to be based. Some MEPs have mischievously suggested that the Parliament's Strasbourg building should be turned over to the new Institute. But the truth is that EIT would be best placed amid an existing, significant hi-tech cluster. Cambridge, which is Europe's top university, has already spawned 3500 businesses across a broad spectrum of science and technology, including Microsoft's European laboratory. It also boasts a unique formal partnership with MIT. Cambridge's success as a world leader in the knowledge-based economy is not unconnected with its proximity to the City of London. Cambridge is the obvious home for EIT. Whether or not Cambridge will defy traditional British indifference to the European Union to win the prize is another matter altogether.

Andrew Duff is the Liberal Democrat Member of the European Parliament for Cambridge.