Assessment of the feasibility and possible impact of the establishment of a European Institute of Technology

This report analyses the feasibility of the European Institute of Technology (EIT) as proposed by the European Commission in the draft Regulation of November 2006 by positioning it in the context of existing universities, research establishments and institutions and programmes for supporting innovation and technology transfer in Europe. Because the EIT has been put forward as an important contribution to close the gap in growth and innovation with the US, the analysis draws extensively on the situation in the US and, too a much lesser degree, in Asia. As the conclusion is that the impact of this particular form of the EIT would suffer from too many constraints, the report puts forward in the concluding chapter an alternative, coined a cluster EIT consisting of multiple European Institutes of Technology in Fields X, Y, Z, etc. It proposes as well that the European Parliament advocates the creation of a European Innovation Fund.