Select Committee on European Union Twenty-Fifth Report

CHAPTER 4: Recommendations

Budgetary provision for the EIT

33.  We recommend that EU funding for the EIT should be reduced to a level commensurate with the gradual phased approach which is now envisaged for its implementation; and that the year by year profile of the total budget should properly reflect that phased approach.

34.  We recommend, further, that the practice of funding such a major project as the EIT from a reserve budgetary source (from the margins of Heading 1A of the Community budget in the case of the EIT) should not be regarded as acceptable except in the most pressing emergencies or other unforeseen circumstances.

Composition of the EIT Governing Board

35.  We recommend that the EIT Governing Board should include an appropriate representation of members with business experience so that it can ensure that the EIT's activities are focussed on technological developments which are commercially viable, as well as innovative.

The EIT's priorities

36.  We recommend that references to suggested topics for EIT work, such as renewable energy and climate change, should not be included in the final text of the EIT Regulation, since this could be interpreted to imply that the Governing Board will have an insufficient degree of autonomy in setting the EIT's priorities.

Monitoring the effectiveness of the EIT

37.  We recommend that there should be a firmly based commitment in the EIT Regulation to a process which ensures that a rigorous evaluation, focussed on the business impact of the work of the KICs at local level, must be carried out and assessed in Council before the initial scale of the EIT can be significantly expanded.

38.  We recommend that the key element of the EIT's annual reports and external evaluations should be an assessment, in commercially relevant terms, of the success of each KIC's activities at local level.

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