Do we need the European Cloud Partnership?

It's that time of the year again, when the great and the good decamp to Davos. An expensive location for an expensive talking shop.

Apparently, one of the new ideas announced today is the European Cloud Partnership.

I was intrigued when I saw the announcement but when I read the text of the speech I was a little lost. I am not sure exactly what this new initiative is designed to achieve. There is talk of first results in 2013 but no clear explanation of what results are hoped for.

What we can clearly see, is that the project will have a budget of $13 million.

Now, I assume that as far as the supplier side is concerned, Cloud vendors would be very happy to talk about how to remove barriers to their wares being purchased. So no cost there. The Eurocrats on the buyer side, representing government procurement, are presumably already salaried and so already paid for their input. This leaves me wondering where the $13 million will be spent.

First class travel, expensive hotels, restaurants and meeting facilities?