The European Union finalises the strategic innovation agenda of its largest innovation community, supporting research-based entrepreneurship.
In the latest update of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), the European Parliament (EP) and the European Council informally agreed on measures to align the EIT’s activities with EU priorities and on reforms to its operations.
The EIT is the instrument bringing together the needs of innovators and researchers with higher education actions – the so-called “knowledge triangle”. It provides grants to its Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) – composed of academic and business consortia – while monitoring their activities, supporting collaboration and disseminating results and best practice.
For the 2021-2027 financial period, the EIT will contribute to the realisation of EU objectives and policies such as the European Green Deal, the European post-COVID recovery plan, strategies for small businesses and industry, the Union’s strategic autonomy and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. The EIT will offer more flexibility for KICs working on the COVID-19 recovery, ensure a better geographical and gender diversity, and adopt a stronger focus on projects involving small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The organisation will also achieve simplification at the administrative, financial and structural levels.
In a bid to strengthen the regional component, the EIT will have a binding budget for its Regional Innovation Scheme. In addition to the existing eight thematic KICs, two new calls for consortia are foreseen. A first, starting in 2022 or 2023, on the Cultural and Creative sectors and industries, and a second, starting in 2026, dedicated to all matters related to water, from rivers to oceans.
Aside from its future evolution under Horizon Europe, the organisation continues to launch a spate of initiatives supporting entrepreneurship. In the latest move, the EIT Health community has launched its own start-up database. Users will be able to take advantage of flexible search functions to explore start-ups who have interacted with EIT Health. The database will provide company information including their latest funding rounds, details on the team and the latest company news.
The EIT was created in 2008 and is located in Budapest. Its eight thematic KICs involve 1’500 partners across business, education and research in more than 50 co-location centres across Europe. For the 2021-2027 period, the EIT is an integral part of the Horizon Europe programme, on which an agreement was reached between the European institutions in December 2020. The budget of the EIT for the whole financial period will be of €2,96 billion.
The informal agreement on the EIT strategic agenda was confirmed in the EP’s Committee for Industry, Research and Energy on 23 February and the full legislative package, including the regulation and the strategic innovation agenda, will be subject to a vote in the Plenary during the month of April.