BRATISLAVA and Vienna, which had presented a joint bid to host the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), have dropped out of the race, the SITA newswire reported on May 30.
“We are not disappointed; we were in the game up to the last minute,” said Slovak Education Minister Ján Mikolaj, who promoted the Slovak-Austrian candidacy at an EU meeting. Instead, Slovakia will now try to get a representative onto the supervisory board of the institute. European ministers in Brussels failed to agree on May 29 where the new research institute would be based.
In April this year, Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico signed a joint letter addressed to European Union representatives in which they expressed their interest in hosting the future European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) in the Bratislava-Vienna development zone.
Following the Brussels talks, the Hungarian capital, Budapest, and the Polish city of Wroclaw are still in the running to host the EIT.
The institute is meant to bridge the innovation gap between the EU and its major economic rivals, the USA and Japan. The proposal to establish the EIT was part of a revision to the 2005 Lisbon Strategy.
