The European Energy Research Alliance (EERA) has submitted its feedback to the European Commission’s consultation on the forthcoming EU Innovation Act. The initiative aims to strengthen Europe’s competitiveness by accelerating the translation of scientific progress into real-world applications that deliver tangible benefits for society.

EERA strongly welcomes the Act’s focus on research and innovation (R&I) as key drivers of EU competitiveness, strategic autonomy, and resilience. In its response, EERA highlights the following key messages: 

• EERA welcomes the European Commission’s plan to propose a European Innovation Act, particularly its aim to support the translation of R&I outcomes into real-world applications that strengthen EU competitiveness and deliver tangible societal benefits. To this end, the Act should explicitly recognise the pivotal role of low-carbon energy R&I in achieving these objectives, reflecting its essential contribution to the strategic impact and coherence of the EU innovation ecosystem;
• The Act should address the fragmentation of Europe’s innovation landscape by fostering integrated ecosystems that connect research, industry, institutional, and societal actors. These ecosystems should deliver joint R&I and industrial roadmaps, support industrial-scale pilots, and develop living labs for high-risk innovations;
• While generally supporting efforts to mobilise private investment and use public procurement strategically to accelerate the market uptake of innovations, EERA underlines the need to ensure that this does not come at the expense of maintaining adequate funding across all TRL levels, which is essential to keep the innovation pipeline active and continuous;
• EERA calls on the forthcoming EIA to establish EU-level one-stop shops to simplify access to research infrastructures, accompanied by targeted funding for SMEs and clear, accessible information to guide stakeholders in using these facilities effectively;
• Finally, the EIA should be aligned with the SET Plan, the forthcoming ERA Act, and FP10’s new ERA Pillar IV to ensure greater policy, regulatory, and funding coherence within the EU R&I ecosystem.