European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). Recast

This Commission document concerns the regulatory scrutiny board opinions on the proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (recast) and the proposal for a decision of the European Parliament and of the Council on the Strategic Innovation Agenda of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) 2021-2027: Boosting the Innovation Talent and Capacity of Europe.

Two opinions were given, the first negative opinion was given based on the version of the proposal dated the 22 January 2019 and the second, positive opinion, was based on the version from 22 March 2019.

Opinion 1: the Board gave a negative opinion as it considered that the report contains important shortcomings that need to be addressed, particularly with respect to the following key aspects:  

- the report does not explain what still needs to be decided and what is covered under Horizon Europe. It is also unclear which elements pertain to the new SIA and the amended EIT Regulation, respectively;

- the report does not provide evidence that demonstrates the need to act on alleged problems. It is also not clear how the options respond comprehensively to the reported problems;

- the report does not explain why the reallocation of funds works in opposite directions for different options, nor does it explain what the regional hubs achieve.

Further considerations and adjustment requirements

The Board suggested that the report should better explain what the Commission needs to decide at this stage. It should clarify the urgency to act and coherence with other initiatives.

Other relevant problems need assessment, such as administrative costs or burdens for SMEs.

The options should contain alternative solutions to the identified problems and for the decisions to take, such as the choice of themes for new KICs. The report should make clear what measures are contained in each option, and how they would tackle the problems in practice. The options should explore alternative uses of the available budget. The report should report on the opinions of stakeholders on the options.

The presentation of the report should be more reader friendly, avoiding jargon and using plain language. It should enable the reader to understand how the EIT works and cooperates with KICs. Some more technical comments have been transmitted directly to the author DG.

Opinion 2: the Board takes note of substantial improvements to the impact assessment. It therefore gave a positive opinion, with a recommendation to further improve the report with respect to the following key aspects:

- the report should present in more detail the views of the relevant stakeholder groups on the different policy options;

- the revised report explains better how the funding model of the KICs would change;

- the report could further elaborate on potential administrative burden reduction with a focus on the reporting on KIC complementary activities;

- the report presents a monitoring and evaluation system that matches objectives with corresponding indicators. It clarifies the sources and the responsibilities for data collection. It would be useful to define benchmarks for measuring success ;

- the revised report is more reader-friendly with the addition of boxes, visual aids including a problem tree, objective tree and a revised intervention logic diagram.