M.I.T.

O mui-famoso MIT na actualidade portuguesa é uma peça de um baralho. E nem todos estamos a vê-lo todo. Éstá em vista um EIT... mais do que Massachussets, um European Institute of Technology. Fica a newscast do Financial Mirror:



EU wants its own "MIT" hi-tech university


22/02/2006


The European Union plans to set up a European Institute of Technology - its own version of an elite research centre designed to close an ever-widening high-tech gap with economic rivals US, China and Japan.

The EU must step up research into innovative products and services in a drive to boost the bloc's competitiveness, the European Commission said.

The EU plans are inspired by the world-renowned Massachusetts Institute for Technology (MIT).

"Europe consistently falls short in turning research and development results into commercial opportunities," EU education commissioner Jan Figel told reporters.

"Our deficit in Europe is not in the humanities, but we have the urgent problem of lagging behind the US in science, research and innovation," Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso added.

The EIT would not be a new university on a single site but would comprise of a management board for European research which would coordinate research across the bloc, connecting academic research with business.

Energy, environment, information technologies and nano technologies will be key areas of research, Barroso said.

The EIT would be designed to upgrade research done at the EU's universities, but above all give it "a European dimension" which existing institutions lack, he added.

"They don't get much funding from the private sector now and will never do because of their purely national dimensions," the Commission chief said, adding that laws in many member states constrict research and innovation.

Barroso underlined that the EU injects one third less in research and development than the US. "Investment in (this area) in the Union is currently at a standstill," he added.

The 25-nation bloc wants to raise spending on research and development to 3% of Gross Domestic Product by 2010. The bloc currently pumps 1.96% of its GDP into the sector, compared to 2.6% of GDP in the US and 3.1% of GDP in Japan.

With many young and brilliant scientists leaving Europe for America once they finish their studies, experts estimate that the EU needs 700,000 skilled researchers by 2010.

While a group of members of the European Parliament want to base the EIT's governing board in the Parliament's buildings at its main seat in Strasbourg, the Commission did not comment on the location.

France has already vetoed the MEP's initiative. European leaders are scheduled to take up the plan for setting up an EIT at a summit in March that will focus on efforts to modernize and speed up the EU's sluggish economy.