• H2020
• Policy & Research

A new evaluation of the EU-funded European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) concludes that the body is making progress in nudging forward research in climate change, energy and digital fields.

The third review of the body in under two years offers a largely positive assessment on the state of the institute established to help transfer research and innovation from academia into commercial applications.

The EIT has attracted much criticism recently, starting with a review by the European Court of Auditors, which criticised the body that has spent close to €3bn since 2008, for showing very little for its investment.

A follow-up report by a special panel of experts convened by the European Commission confirmed many of the body’s serial shortcomings.

The latest report by ICF and Technopolis looks at the EIT over the period 2011-2015 and recounts many of the problems faced by the institute and efforts to address them.

It reiterates questions raised elsewhere about the long-term viability of the EIT’s many distributed innovation incubators.

The report comes as the EU enters a debate over the future of its budget; while some argue for a rise in overall spending for research and innovation activities, others are expecting a cut.

EIT operates through what it calls Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs), these are groups of universities, research institutes and businesses working in specific fields. The future solvency of these KICs is the main problem identified by the review.

The dependency on EIT funding is supposed to fall from close to 90% in 2016 to 27% in 2022, and then to 10% by 2025 – 15 years after the first-wave KICs were established.

The evaluators said potential future sources of cash include equity positions in EIT-backed start-ups and royalties from EIT-supported projects, but also raised the fundamental question of whether financial sustainability for KICs will ever become feasible.

The report also questioned whether such a goal is even desirable, given that the core purpose of the EIT is to invest in areas that would not have otherwise been pursued by the private sector.