Strategic Innovation Agenda of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) 2021-2027

Key points

The EESC fully supports the synergy between the EIT and the Horizon Europe programme in the form of a simplified research and innovation architecture.

For the EESC, the EIT should:

• be one of the main drivers of objective-driven innovation and be capable of addressing societal challenges;
• play a more central role on the EU's national and regional innovation scene;
• highlight its unique added value as a European leader in high-skill, specialist business education, identifying and trialling new teaching and learning methods;
• sound out, with the KICs, new systems for harnessing and promoting the "proximity effect", bringing in local centres in particular: they should provide an access point to global innovation platforms from regional and local actors;
• build up (with the KICs) their own strategies for financing businesses and development, in order to support the process of consolidating innovative enterprises;
• ensure that the distribution of KICs more fully respects the geopolitical balance and better covers the territory of the Union.

With regard to the proposal for a decision on the Strategic Innovation Agenda for the period 2021‑2027, the EESC thinks that this process should be part of an all-encompassing approach and should cover all types of partnership in order to ensure a comprehensive overview of the work carried out in the partnerships and to achieve the objectives of the policies.

For more information please contact the INT Section Secretariat.