The road to FP10: New foundations for Europe’s innovation ecosystem?

Since the beginning of the current Commission’s mandate, a major preoccupation has been to tackle various ‘malfunctions’ within the European innovation ecosystem. Among these, three of the more notable are the failure to convert enough outstanding research into market-leading technologies, the inability to scale high-potential start-ups into companies able to compete with rivals in the US and China, and the lack of alignment between EU and national strategies and programmes. As highlighted by Letta and Draghi, among others, without a fix for these structural issues Europe will struggle to achieve its meta-objectives such as competitiveness, resilience and economic security.

Encouragingly, a number of legislative proposals and financial tools have already been launched in recent months, including transversal initiatives such as EU Inc, the Startup & Scaleup Strategy and the EIB Group’s Tech Champions initiative. There is also the promise of a much-enlarged European Innovation Council under FP10, plus the promotion of new ARPA-style instruments to promote breakthrough innovation in strategic sectors like defence. Against this backdrop, on July 2 Science|Business will convene members of its Network with one of the Commission’s key decision makers to discuss how the new architecture for innovation is developing, and in particular how forthcoming ‘building blocks’ such as the Scale-up Europe Fund and European Innovation Act will contribute to accelerate the transition.