EU: the Research Commissioner Moedas calls for a European Innovation Council (EIC)

Today, innovation in Horizon 2020 is very dispersed among several instruments and the EIC should make up for this lack of clarity. It should serve as a “one stop shop” for innovators, fulfilling their needs in the same way as the European Research Council (ERC) provides funding for new research ideas.

The European Research Council (ERC), set up in 2007, provides funding to individual grantees working on any basic research subject in Europe and it has become very popular with researchers for setting a high scientific frame while keeping red tape low. While the ERC offers a proven successful portal for basic research funding, very often innovators, be they researchers or SMEs, do not have a clear idea at which door to knock. According to the EU’s Research & Innovation Commissioner Mr. Carlos Moedas “Europe does not have a world-class scheme to support the very best innovation in the way the ERC is the global reference for supporting excellent science”.

Commissioner Moedas launched the debate of setting up a European Innovation Council (EIC) that “should be modelled to the very successful ERC and should support innovation closer to the needs of the users”. According to him, the EIC should serve as a “one stop shop” for innovators, fulfilling their needs in the same way as the ERC provides funding for new research ideas. In a recent interview with Science Business, he highlighted the difficulty for innovators to see clearly through the Horizon 2020 labyrinth and called for some streamlining, re-branding and re-packaging of Horizon 2020 innovation calls. Today, innovation in Horizon 2020 is very dispersed among several instruments and the EIC should make up for this lack of clarity, by taking stock of the various schemes to support innovation and SMEs under Horizon 2020 (e.g. SME Instrument, Fast-track to Innovation, Access to Risk Finance, Public-Private Partnerships, InnovFin) and providing a new tool where researchers with close-to-markets ideas could go straight to find funding options (tailor-made to innovators). In addition to streamlining and simplification, the EIC would be open to support excellent innovations in any field and not just the priority areas supported by H2020.

It is unclear at this stage how the EIC would work in practice, and the scientific community has diverse views on the matter. However, the Commission would come up with a more detailed proposal by 2017 with the Horizon 2020’s mid-term review where, according to Moedas, the EIC should be taken forward as “a major element”. In the meantime, the Commission is keen to receive feedback from stakeholders (i.e. innovators) on whether an EIC “one stop shop” would improve the European funding landscape for them and will launch a concept paper at the beginning of 2016 together with a stakeholder consultation event, with a final concept on the EIC (taking into account the inputs received) expected to be published by 2017.

For further information:

Valerio Abbadessa, valerio.abbadessa@enea.it