The EUtopian motivation toward excellence.

It looks more or less like Freudian penis envy to the dispassionate observer. Like we’ve said here before: hey dude, whatever works.

«BRUSSELS — Austria will use its presidency of the EU to promote proposals to create a European rival to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in a bid to stop the continent's brightest minds moving across the Atlantic, the country's ambassador to the EU said Friday.

European believe talent is too thinly spread around the 25-nation EU, and cooperation between European countries is needed to create specialized centers where top students, teachers and researchers could concentrate.

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin has proposed such an institution be created in Paris with a $360 million starting budget.

However Jorgo Chatzimarkakis, a German member of the European Parliament's research committee, said the EU should not just seek to create its own version of the elite school in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

"Everybody knows that it cannot be a copy of the MIT because the MIT needed 150 years in order to become successful, and we don't have that time," the Liberal lawmaker said in a telephone interview.

"There is a big, big reluctance among the European universities to accept a new competitor, Chatzimarkakis said.»

Such camaraderie. If their first instinct is to try to ban their competition out of existence, how do they think they can compete with the work done at MIT or CalTech?