Mr José Manuel Barroso, European Commission president, will today set out plans for Europe to take on US dominance in university research, but will ditch the pretence that the EU can outstrip the US's economy by 2010.
Mr Barroso will set out a pared-down plan for EU economic reform, focusing heavily on jobs, growth and research, marking a significant shift in priorities.
Other EU targets on social policy and the environment will take a back seat, as Mr Barroso attempts to persuade national leaders to adopt and implement national growth plans when they meet in Brussels in March.
His agenda will focus on boosting competition, freeing up Europe's single market in services and regulating only where necessary.
He said a top priority would be to raise Europe's research base, and the Commission would help create more top-flight international universities in the EU. "We need at least one Massachusetts Institute of Technology - there will be some flagships sharing that idea," he said.
A former politics professor at Georgetown University in the US, he said: "The one thing that strikes me is that the best researchers aren't in Europe."
The former Portuguese prime minister, who wants his five-year term judged on the delivery of economic reform, will lay to rest EU leaders' boast that Europe could overtake the US "as the world's most competitive, knowledge-based economy" by 2010.
Aides confirmed the ambitious wording of the 2010 target would not be repeated in today's plan. However, Mr Barroso will preserve a number of detailed targets for 2010, including the raising of research spending and employment rates.
His focus on jobs and growth marks a change in approach for the EU executive, which in the past has championed calls for greater power for Brussels. - (Financial Times Service)
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