Observers suggest the delay could be due to disagreements between the Commission directorates handling research and innovation policy
Photo credits: Levi Meir Clancy / Unsplash
The European Commission failed to present its Innovation Act as planned on March 18, suggesting that it needed more time to complete work on the proposal.
“The Commission adopts its initiatives when they are ready and mature enough,” a spokesperson for the Commission said. “The adoption date of the Innovation Act will be confirmed at a later stage.” Commission sources say that the proposal will now be presented before the summer.
Research lobbies in Brussels suspect that the complexity of the proposal and its potential for creating disagreements between Commission directorates may be responsible for the delay.
The Innovation Act is intended to address the barriers that prevent innovative ideas from reaching the market, with measures such as simplified certification procedures, regulatory sandboxes and minimum requirements for public procurement. It was scheduled to be published on March 18 alongside proposals for an EU-wide company regime designed to allow faster company creation and expansion across borders.
Measures in areas such as access to public and private procurement markets necessarily cut across Commission directorates, and touch on broader economic questions, like whether the EU wants a more protectionist or free-trade approach. “This could turn rather sensitive and political, as it directly relates to Europe’s industrial and economic strategy,” said Julien Chicot, head of research and innovation policy at the Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities.
In this context, he added, the Commission may want to better coordinate with the upcoming Public Procurement Act, scheduled for the second quarter of 2026. On the other hand, the postponement breaks the connection between the Innovation Act and the EU-wide company regime, which was assumed to be its flagship measure, he said.
Kurt Deketelaere, secretary general of the League of European Research Universities, also suspects that “a disagreement” between the Commission’s research and industrial policy directorates is partly responsible for the delay. Similar disagreements appear to have derailed the Competitiveness Coordination Tool, he added. This is a mechanism intended to manage priority setting across the new European Competitiveness Fund and the next Horizon Europe.
“There is a growing sense that the Commission has announced a number of important concepts before fully clarifying how they fit together operationally,” said Louise Drogoul, senior advisor for innovation and sustainability at the Cesaer university association. “The Commission is still struggling to put in place a clear, credible and connected architecture across research, innovation and competitiveness policy.”
Too much, too soon?
Other observers are not entirely surprised that the Commission has missed its own deadline for the Innovation Act, given the scope of the proposal and the short time given for drafting and consultation.
“By comparison, the process leading to the forthcoming European Research Area Act allows more time for stakeholder engagement and for shaping its content in an inclusive manner,” said Vinciane Gaillard, director for research and innovation at the European University Association.
One difference is that the European Research Area is enshrined in the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU, whereas the Innovation Act “has been framed much more broadly as a cross-sectoral instrument spanning commercialisation, procurement, sandboxes, infrastructures and industry-academia links,” Drogoul said. “That does not mean it lacks a legal basis, but it does suggest a more complex exercise in assembling a coherent instrument across several policy domains.”
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In her view, the more difficult issues sit at the intersection of research, innovation and market deployment, be it improving the commercialisation of publicly funded research without imposing one-size-fits-all intellectual property models or using procurement more strategically to help innovative solutions scale.
“These are all politically attractive objectives, but much harder to translate into a framework that is both legally sound and workable in practice,” she said.
In the meantime, Gaillard believes that the delay is “a valuable opportunity to ensure a more open and structured consultation process with stakeholders, including universities.”
Chicot, on the other hand, does not want to see further postponement. “It is also urgent that the Commission provides instruments to improve accessibility of universities’ technology infrastructures,” he said, referring to another of the measures expected to appear in the act.
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