Gunnar Hökmark (EPP-ED). Mr President, we need to support innovations and research all over Europe. That is a crucial task for business life, universities and research institutes, Member States and the Union. It will require much more funding for research and innovations. That is why I would like to underline what the Commissioner stated earlier that, regarding the EIT, the key issue now is the financing and funding. This is because we need to ensure that, not only is the EIT funded, but also that it is not funded and getting its finances via money that otherwise would have financed research and innovation in other programmes and projects.
I think this cannot be underlined too much, as the funding for the EIT must come from other items in the budget than those which today contribute to the efforts of innovations and research in the Seventh Framework Programme, in the CIP or other items under the 1A heading.
If we can manage to do that, then we can manage to bring additional resources to innovations and research in Europe and can contribute to the innovations. From the perspective of my group, I would like to underline that that is the crucial test that the Commission has to live up to and we need to contribute to because, if so, we can all contribute to Europe with more and better innovations. If we succeed with this, we will succeed with innovations.