Work in Parliament Maria da Graça Carvalho appointed rapporteur for the strategic agenda for the EIT, the main European Education, Science and Innovation network

Maria da Graça Carvalho was appointed responsible by the European Parliament for the report “Strategic Agenda for Innovation of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT)”, the largest network of Education, Science and Innovation in the European Union.

Based in Budapest, Hungary, the EIT is part of the Research and Innovation framework programme, promoting a “knowledge triangle” covering universities, companies and research centres. Its action has contributed decisively to training and education (masters and doctorates) of highly qualified staff, creation and growth of companies and development of new products and services across the European Union.

In Portugal, the EIT community gathers 34 organizations that, between 2014 and 2017, benefited from nine million euros of European funds, distributed between the different Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs): Climate, Digital, Energy, Health, Raw Materials and Food.

As rapporteur, Maria da Graça Carvalho will be responsible for defining the European Parliament's final position in regard to the funding and priorities of EIT set under the new Horizon Europe framework programme, the successor to Horizon 2020.

For the MEP, the appointment has a special meaning, as it is a European body she has always followed very closely. “I am very happy to take a file in which I have been involved since its early days. I started following the EIT - or rather the process that led to its establishment - still as main advisor to the president of the European Commission [Durão Barroso], in 2007”, Maria da Graça Carvalho recalls. “Later, I was founder of the EIT Group of Friends in the European Parliament, which I chaired between 2009 and 2014. It was always a file that I followed very carefully”, she concludes.