2013 competitive funding and 2012 developments

The EIT principles for the determination of its annual financial allocation to the KICs and criteria for 2013 have been agreed upon.

As announced in the 2009 KIC Call, the EIT will now make its annual financial allocation decision based on the assessment of each KIC's individual performance and competitive review between the KICs.

“Rewarding excellence based upon concrete results and impact whilst encouraging and seeding sustainable growth amongst its innovation factories is at the heart of the EIT concept and I am very pleased with these developments” says Alexander von Gabain, Chairman of the EIT Governing Board on the occasion of the March EIT Governing Board meeting.

This agreement on competitive funding aims to provide a long-term framework for the allocation of EIT funding to the KICs and for introduction of the competitive review to be successful and accepted by all parties involved several elements must be taken into account by the EIT, in particular: level playing field between the KICs, timely information, consistency, KICs strategic objectives and performance indicators, appropriate reporting and monitoring mechanisms, comparability and competition.
Moreover, given the multi-annual* nature of the partnership between the EIT and the KICs, the EIT’s annual financial contribution to the KICs should be allocated in a manner that balances the requirement to support the KICs’ long-term strategy of establishment and consolidation, while rewarding on a competitive basis a KIC for its performance and ambitions in the short-term against objective criteria. The annual EIT financial contribution will therefore be defined based on the two-pronged approach: EIT Support Funding and EIT Competitive Funding.
In order to facilitate the business plan preparations, the EIT in consultation with KICs has elaborated and finalised a substantive package of planning documents. This will ensure a smooth process for the allocation of the 2013 grants and provides comprehensive ex-ante planning.
In addition to the promising developments for the EIT competitive funding, the beginning of 2012 has also seen the finalisation of the 2012 annual Grant Agreements (GA) between the EIT and the three KICs. The EIT Director, José Manuel Leceta and Climate-KIC CEO, Mary Ritter, today signed the agreement between the EIT and Climate-KIC and the GA will be signed with EIT ICT Labs and KIC InnoEnergy during the beginning of April.
 
* the EIT and each of the KICs work together on the basis of a seven year Framework Partnership Agreement (FPA). As outlined in the FPA’s, the allocation of EIT funding is defined in a yearly grant agreement (GA’s) between the EIT and each of the KICs.