Malta was formally welcomed as a member of the Eureka Initiative, a network that has used some e24 billion of public and private funding since 1985 to support market-oriented research and development.
A memorandum of understanding was signed by Industry, Investment and IT Minister Austin Gatt yesterday at the 22nd Eureka Ministerial Conference held in Prague in the Czech Republic yesterday.
Speaking at a press conference after the meeting, Dr Gatt said that Malta’s participation in Eureka should considerably improve socio-economic benefits for Maltese companies and, in turn, help contribute to increased R&D spending, a critical investment for future economic European economic growth, jobs and improve competitiveness.
“Our participation in Eureka will create opportunities for networking with other centres of business, research and knowledge throughout Europe,” Dr Gatt said. “We are joining at the right time, and our economy is crying out for initiatives that will bolster innovation,” he added.
The minister said that existing research frameworks favoured the larger companies but were not very friendly towards SMEs. However, “Eureka will give SMEs what the traditional framework did not”.
The government, he said, expects Maltese businesses to readily adapt to Eureka’s renowned bottom-up approach to returning public funding investment less than two years after project completion.
Dr Gatt said he was very satisfied that Malta had joined the Eureka network and it would take innovation on the island to a higher level and also lead to greater investment.
Thanks to membership of this network, the risks and high costs of investment associated with R&D projects are shared between collaborating project participants so that resource management becomes more feasible.
Local and small and medium sized enterprises will be able to participate in short-term, market-oriented R&D programmes designed to cater for and include small innovative companies, helping them to grow through research and development and be involved in projects much larger than they would otherwise not be able to support.
To this end, a fund with euro 1 million has already be set up to help Eureka projects starting this year and in 2007.
Malta is already participating in a Eureka Medea + cluster involved in a groundbreaking automotive project, the A401 Car vision, with aims to develop the specifications for microchip to help ensure driver vigilance and anti-collision measures, while meeting design-for-cost effectiveness for high volume car application. ST Malta are designing the sensor technology used in this project.
According to Malta Enterprise, who is coordinating these projects, the first proposals are expected this month and a series of meetings will be held with interested parties to explain how the programme works.
Evan Stringos, Eureka national coordinator in Malta, told The Malta Independent that a number of companies have expressed an interest in taking part and they have already submitted outlines of their proposals.
Mr Stringos said ME would use already established links to increase interest in Eureka, in particular through such mechanisms like ME’s relationship managers.
“They are the contact point between Malta Enterprise and Maltese businesses. We are delighted to be part of Eureka and hope that our country will be a valuable contributor to increase competitiveness,” Mr Stringos said.
The European Union aims to be a world leader in the knowledge economy by the year 2010. The Lisbon Agenda emphasises on the need for more research and innovation in Europe, however many countries are still struggling to reach the benchmark for R&D investment which was set at three per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Eureka has been particularly successful over the past 20 years.
According to an assessment report on 300 projects, for every e1 invested, there has been a return on that investment of e20; and 900 additional jobs have been created.