Poland holds out over EU research institute

By Huw Jones

BRUSSELS, May 30 (Reuters) - European Union ministers failed to agree on Friday where the bloc's new research institute would be based because Poland held out despite overwhelming support for Hungary, an EU diplomat said.

The EU has adopted plans to set up a European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) to close the competitiveness gap with the United States.

Twenty-six of the EU's 27 member countries backed Hungary's bid to host the institute in its capital Budapest when the bloc's research ministers met over dinner on Thursday evening, said the diplomat, who declined to be named.

But Poland, which has campaigned hard for the institute to be based in the Polish city of Wroclaw, said it had no mandate to give a final decision, said the diplomat.

The meeting dragged on into the early hours of Friday without agreement, but Budapest's candidacy looks certain to win.

Ministers agreed to take a decision on June 18 based on two new criteria -- the winner should be a new member country and not already have an EU agency.

From the shortlist of five locations that also included Jena in Germany, Sant Cugat del Valles near Barcelona in Spain and a joint bid by Bratislava and Vienna, only Budapest would meet the criteria, the diplomat said.

The EIT is the brainchild of European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, who had envisaged a 2.3 billion euro campus-based institute to rival the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States.

Climate change and renewable energy would be among leading areas of study at the EIT.

Faced with scepticism on the part of Britain and other EU countries, the EIT will have a more modest start as a link to a network of universities and private research bodies.

The European parliament diluted the Commission's proposal by ditching a provision for the EIT to award its own degrees and also insisted the new body start with a pilot phase budgeted at about 300 million euros.