The European Parliament on Tuesday approved the setting up of a technology institute aimed at plugging Europe's innovation gap with the United States and China.
The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) is the brainchild of European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, who envisaged a 2.3 billion euro ($3.56 billion) campus-based institute to rival the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and study areas such as climate change.
But faced with scepticism on the part of Britain and other EU states, the EIT will have a more modest start as a link to a network of universities and private research bodies. Reino Paasilinna, the Finnish socialist who steered the measure through parliament, said the United States was filing a third more patents with the European Patent Office than Europeans themselves.
"Europe is lagging behind," he said. "We are trying to catch up with not just the United States but other economic powers as well. "Why don't we believe in our own ideas in Europe? Even when we have ideas they don't seem to lead to commercial applications."
In the past 10 years China's spending on research and development has risen from virtually nil to 0.5 percent of gross domestic product, Paasilinna said. "This is an opportunity to boost Europe's innovation," EU Education Commissioner Jan Figel said of the project aimed at helping Europe retain more of its scientists and turning their inventions more successfully into commercial applications.
Students from Poland handed out leaflets to lawmakers to campaign for Wroclaw to become home for the EIT, though Austria and Hungary are also vying to host the new body's secretariat. EU governments will decide on the winner.
The final deal - which has already been informally agreed with EU states who have joint say - diluted the Commission's original draft by ditching a proposal for the EIT to award its own degrees.
The assembly also insisted the new body start with a pilot phase and renamed the new body the European Institute of Innovation and Technology to emphasise innovation, although the EIT acronym will remain unchanged. EU states agreed last November to provide 309 million euros for the EIT out of the bloc's funds.