Malta Enterprise, Eureka and EuroStars in the R&D scenario

Reports on Malta not yet participating in the EuroStars programme may lead some to wrongly conclude a lack of interest by Malta on R&D (Malta Alone Gives EU Research Programme A Miss, July 1). While it may be true that national expenditure on R&D is not as high as in other countries, efforts on R&D in the past few years have grown with positive results for the economy.

One of the efforts by Malta Enterprise over the past two years has been though the Eureka network (www.eureka.be). The primary goal of Eureka is to raise the productivity and competitiveness of European industry and national economies through its bottom-up approach to technological innovation. Since its inception in 1985, substantial public and private funding has been mobilised to support the research and development carried out within the Eureka framework and the network has grown to now include 38 full members. Malta became a member in June 2006.

One local project assisted by Malta Enterprise is in the field of professional broadcast equipment. Ing. Mario Ellul of New Energy Ltd of Bulebel saw a need for a battery charger to complement their sophisticated battery management system. The local R&D team successfully developed and launched a new design that also included careful optimisation of the production processes as well as the components used. The funds from Malta Enterprise encouraged and helped sustain New Energy's development in a timely manner that is so important for the success of such efforts. The red tape on Eureka funds is kept to a minimum. New Energy have kept on innovating and last year launched three new chargers, one of which sporting an entirely new concept of an intelligent interface where the status of the battery can be diagnosed and displayed continuously.

Over the past two years Malta Enterprise has committed €350,000 to leverage over €1.2 million worth of local research and development. The estimated economic benefits from these projects are significantly more. The nine locally based companies that are individually using these funds along with more funds of their own and of their foreign partners will ensure that their resulting products are not only commercially viable but also have higher chances on the global market at a truly internationally competitive level. Malta Enterprise will also be joining the EuroEnviron working group. EuroEnviron is the Eureka umbrella aimed at promoting projects focussed on environmental technologies.

Last year Eureka together with the European Commission devised a programme where for the first time the EU Commission would be partially funding Eureka-type projects. The EuroStars programme is intended to address a niche market of research and innovation-performing businesses that fulfil the EU-adopted definition of an SME, are based in a EuroStars participating country and that, in addition, invest 10 per cent or more of full-time equivalent or annual turnover in research activities.

Malta Enterprise suspects that this latter eligibility criteria cuts out most, if not all, of the Maltese SMEs from the programme. It is not easy to find a company that invests more than 10 per cent of its annual turnover, year in year out, on research and development. This has been officially communicated to the EU Commission.

Notwithstanding, Malta Enterprise has also already communicated with the Commission that it will now put in a new item on next year's budget to cover the costs of Malta's participation in EuroStars next year. In the meantime we will continue successfully participating within the full Eureka as we have done since Malta joined the programme in 2006, where all the allocated funds have been taken up by the successful Eureka participants.

More information on Eureka and how enterprises can participate are on www.maltaenterprise.com/eureka and http://maltaenterprise.net .