"This will complement EU efforts to stimulate research," he said speaking at a summit of EU leaders focused on efforts to boost innovation in Europe as well as energy and relations with Russia.

The European Institute of Technology is to have a budget of 2.4 billion euros (3.03 billion dollars) for the period from 2008 to 2013 with 300 million euros coming from the EU's budget and the rest from still-undefined public and private sources.

The EIT, which will be spread out over different locations in the EU, is to function on the basis of research networks linking researchers at universities as well as public and private laboratories.

Projects are to range from biotechnolgy to the environment and the programme has already stirred interest from such corporate names as Siemens, Nokia and Microsoft.

Barroso has pushed the programme as one way in which Europe can catch up with the United States on research and development, amid growing EU concerns about the widening gulf between the two regions capacities to generate innovative new technologies.

He also said that the European Commission would prepare a "pragmatic approach" to help bridge differences over long-stalled plans for an EU patent system, which have floundered in the past over disputes about which languages to use.

"We are to propose a joint pragmatic approach to member states, especially concerning how to settle disputes," he said.

The European Commission has been looking into how to set up an EU patent system since 1997 but member states remain divided over how it should work and what languages should be used although they agreed in principle to the idea in 2000.

There is already a European Patent Office based in Munich which operates on an intragovernmental basis and is therefore not an EU institution. It includes some non-EU members such as Turkey.

The office only gives protection in member countries specified by a patent seeker and disputes are handled in national courts.

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