The Fraunhofer Institute, Europe’s largest applied research institute, has joined calls to abolish the European Innovation Agency (EIT). In a denunciation, Fraunhofer, which has been involved in seven Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) established by the EIT, said the agency “fails to add value to Europe’s industrial competitiveness.” The KICs are a Europe-wide network of higher education institutions, research centers, companies and investors that work on challenges ranging from clean energy to food systems.
Fraunhofer criticizes the EIT and its KICs as “overly complex, expensive and lacking transparency.” “The administrative burden is enormous, both in terms of the governance structure and the regulatory framework,” says Verena Fennemann, an environmental engineer who heads Fraunhofer’s Brussels office and one of the paper’s authors. Moreover, the focus on profits in the later stages of the KICs could make it especially difficult for universities and research institutes, which may be forced to pull out, as Fraunhofer has done in several cases.
The European Research Universities Association echoes these concerns, arguing that the EIT process should be consistent and simplified and that nonprofits should not have to pay membership fees. But Fenneman stresses that “we are not calling for the immediate abolition of KIC. This is about a new framework programme. We will continue to be a partner of KIC.”
Indeed, the spotlight on the EIT, which was set up in 2008, comes at a time when Europe is beginning to turn its attention to the Tenth Framework Programme, the successor to the Horizon Europe research programme, due to start in 2028. Fraunhofer is one of a group of research institutes currently calling on the European Commission to double its funding to €200bn (£170bn).
The remarks echo calls from the Latvian and Danish governments, which have already proposed integrating the EIT’s innovation activities with the European Innovation Council and subsuming its education activities under Erasmus+, the European Commission’s education and training programme.
To overcome the EU’s weakness in translating research into commercial products, Fraunhofer suggests that the EIC itself needs to evolve into “a truly attractive innovation support structure and technology promotion mechanism for Europe.” “We’ve done great things with framework programs, but when we leave them alone and say, ‘Get funding from your own institutions,’ they often enter the valley of death,” Fenneman says. Instead, the EIC’s existing transition programs could be strengthened to push these projects further towards commercialization.
In its defense, an EIT spokesman said that at a time of shrinking public funding, “we’re building a system that allows us to fund ourselves with private and public funds, and no other public institution in the world does anything like this.” Startups under the EIT’s purview have raised €9.5 billion over seven years against the EIT’s €3 billion budget, for a total of €71 billion. The KICs themselves, which have always sought to be financially self-sufficient, have raised more than €200 million. But doing so can make some KICs competitors for other funding programs, Fenneman noted.
However, the EIT claims that KIC’s investment performance “shows that people are willing to pay for their services, recognise the added value and are willing to invest in them.” This is a complete contradiction. [the] Fraunhofer’s position is that there is no added value.
The spokesman added that when start-ups look to commercialise their products, there is a whole chain available through KIC, from investor to manufacturer.Two of KIC’s biggest success stories are Swedish battery manufacturer Northvolt and energy storage specialist Skeleton Technologies, both of which the EIT backed when they were unable to raise private funding. Skeleton has just announced its second factory in Europe.
