On 28 May, the European Commission (EC) launched its EU Startup and Scaleup Strategy. Titled “Choose Europe to Start and Scale”, it echoes and complements the recent “Choose Europe for Science initiative”, launched earlier this month by EC President Ursula von der Leyen, a €500 million scheme running over the next two years and aiming to attract top scientific talent, researchers, and innovators from abroad. The EU Startup and Scaleup Strategy indeed answers the Commission’s ambition of supporting the entire investment journey in innovative technologies, from fundamental research to infrastructure deployment, and of tackling current difficulties in bringing ideas from lab to market.

The initiative puts forward five main objectives: fostering an innovation-friendly environment; driving better financing; supporting market uptake and expansion; attracting and retaining top talent; and facilitating access to infrastructure, networks, and services. These aim to address various identified shortcomings, such as the fragmentation of the Single Market due to regional imbalances and differing legislative environments across Member States, or the difficulties in unlocking private funding, notably because of high failure costs. With the Strategy, the Commission also wants to address the two valleys of death in innovation: failing to turn innovations into marketable products, and innovative companies struggling to scale up.  

Building on what the Commission identifies as solid foundations, including a highly skilled workforce and a stable regulatory system, the Strategy outlines legislative, policy, and financial support for various actors in the innovation ecosystem across several areas, ranging from labour law to digitalisation. More specifically, several proposals directly touch upon research and innovation policies. At the national level, the Commission announced it would introduce country-specific recommendations to Member States to improve their innovation policies and contribute to assessing the potential impact of new legislation on innovation.

The Strategy also unveils further details on the European Innovation Act, expected in the first quarter of 2026. According to the publication, the Act will promote regulatory sandboxes to allow innovators to develop and test new ideas, and will further encourage access by innovative companies to European research and technology infrastructures. In addition, the EU Innovation Act is poised to contribute to the revision of EU public procurement of research and development services.

The European Innovation Council (EIC) is also identified as a key instrument in the Strategy, with suggestions to expand its role. The Commission notably proposes to streamline its procedures and place greater emphasis on challenge-driven, high-risk innovation, drawing inspiration from the US Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). Moreover, as part of the EIC Fund, the Commission suggests deploying a market-based, privately managed and privately co-financed new “Scaleup Europe Fund” to complement instruments such as InvestEU and those of the European Investment Bank.

Turning to universities and the research and innovation ecosystem, the Strategy identifies a lack of a pro-innovation mindset in many universities, and insufficient incentives for researchers to commercialise their work. It thus plans to launch a “Lab to Unicorn” initiative to accelerate the commercialisation of research results. Within this programme, the Commission recommends supporting European “Startup & Scaleup Hubs”, centres rooted in strong university ecosystems and designed to bridge the academic-industrial divide as well as to reinforce networking and collaboration. It also proposes supporting the capacity-building of “Technology Transfer Offices”, i.e. entities within research institutions handling the commercialisation of research, and the creation of “venture builder” roles in research organisations.

These initiatives should also help startups access cutting-edge research and technology facilities, as well as expertise, to conduct rapid tests and accelerate time-to-market. The Strategy highlights the role of Horizon Europe, particularly through its support for the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking, which will host 13 new AI Factories providing computing power and tailored support to SMEs and start-ups. It also proposes the development of a new “Charter of Access” to guarantee and facilitate industrial use, including by start-ups and scale-ups , of research and technology infrastructures.

The implementation of the Strategy will be key to fostering an attractive innovation ecosystem in the EU, as only 8% of global scaleups are currently based in Europe, and to developing the EU’s broader strategic autonomy and resilience. The European Commission has pledged to monitor the Strategy’s progress, starting with the adoption of a harmonised definition of startups, scaleups, and innovative companies, and by measuring the increase in the number of startups in the EU, including the number of “centaurs” and “unicorns”, respectively valued at €100 million and €1 billion. A report on implementation is expected by the end of 2027.