Industry, innovation and infrastructure

The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) was created in 2008 by Regulation (EC) No 294/2008. Its mission is to respond to major societal challenges by improving the EU's innovation capabilities and performance. Every seven years, the Commission has to submit a proposal for a Strategic Innovation Programme (SIP) which sets out the priority areas and the long-term strategy for the EIT's action, as well as its financial needs.

The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) Regulation, adopted in 2008, sets out its mission and tasks, as well as the framework for its operation. This regulation was amended in 2013 to bring it in line with the Horizon 2020 programme.
For the period 2021-2027, Horizon Europe will be the Union program that will finance the EIT. Since a number of provisions of the EIT Regulation refer directly to the current Horizon 2020 program, these provisions need to be amended to make them compatible with the forthcoming EU Framework Programmes for research and innovation. It is therefore proposed to make the new EIT Regulation temporally neutral, so that it would in principle not be necessary to modify it at the end of each MFF or that the changes would be only minimal. It is proposed to amend it by means of the legislative recasting technique to ensure greater legal clarity and readability.

The EESC believes that the practical applications of blockchain technologies can significantly improve the performance of social economy organisations, benefiting them, their members and, above all, their end users. Besides, the EESC believes that real involvement of social economy and civil society organisations is imperative to ensure that the huge opportunities offered by the new technologies are geared towards delivering benefits, access, transparency and participation for all, and not just for a new "digital economy elite".