The European Research Council has priority over a European Institute of Technology say Europe’s Universities

The possible development of a European Institute of Technology (EIT) should not be to the detriment of achieving a key FP7 goal of creating an effective European Research Council (ERC), with an annual budget of about €1.5 billion, EUA tells the European Commission in a statement on behalf of its members.

Any future EIT should be built, therefore, with “fresh money”, preferably with matching contributions from public and private funding sources.

Assuming that these two core conditions are met, European universities believe that an EIT should take the form of a “programme-driven” competition between collaborating institutions to which an EIT “excellence/quality label” is awarded, instead of the US model of a single institution.

Universities would compete to produce high quality programmes which integrate teaching, research and knowledge transfer, in collaboration with research institutions and business.

Programmes would give young researchers the opportunity to work in major project teams, an experience which would open up new career paths for them and provide the European labour market with the skills needed to enhance its global competitiveness.

EUA’s contribution to the European Commission’s public consultation provides a “composite viewpoint” of the range of views of the Association’s wide membership (over 750 individual institutions and 34 National Rectors’ Conferences in 46 countries). In the current climate of uncertainty over EU level commitments to research funding, EUA stresses that reaching a true European consensus on establishing an EIT is problematic.

• EUA Statement on the Public Consultation on the idea of establishing a European Institute of Technology (EIT)
http://www.eua.be/eua/jsp/en/upload/EUA_Statement_on_EIT_Final.1132219889383.pdf

• EUA’s work on the ERC
http://www.eua.be/eua/en/Research_Financing.jspx

• EUA Conference: "Research in European Universities: Strategies and Funding"
20-22 October 2005, Uppsala, Sweden
http://www.eua.be/eua/en/Conferences.jspx

Countries

Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Czechia, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Spain, Finland, France, Hungary, Ireland, Iceland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Slovenia, Slovakia, United Kingdom