European Innovation Act

What the Commission is doing

The European Commission plans to adopt the European Innovation Act in 2026, as announced in the EU Startup and Scaleup Strategy and the Competitiveness Compass for the EU. 

The European Innovation Act will aim to create cross-sectoral legal framework conditions to remove barriers for bringing innovative ideas to market in all sectors. 

It will address issues related to the commercialisation of research results, collaboration between the industry and the academia, access to markets, finance, talent and infrastructures. It will also focus on creating more coordinated regulatory, policy and investment framework conditions aimed at bringing innovative solutions to the market across the EU. 

Boosting the commercialisation of innovation is important, as the uptake and diffusion of innovative solutions in the EU Single Market is suboptimal compared to Europe’s main global competitors. Europe must also overcome the innovation gap, as well as boost its competitiveness and growth.

Why the European Innovation Act is needed

Europe produces an impressive amount of high-quality research and innovation, but only a small part is transformed into successful new products on the market. To solve this problem, it will be key to ramp up the exploitation of intellectual property rights, standardisation and certification of innovative solutions. Barriers also must be removed to create a more pro-commercialisation mindset in universities and research organisations and to improve the collaboration between industry, academia and other public sector organisations. 

Europe’s underinvestment in the commercialisation of innovative solutions is a problem for all sectors. More agile innovation pathways that can pool EU, national and private investments are needed to bring to the market capital intensive strategic technologies. Establishing a framework that facilitates coordination of national and EU innovation policies and programmes may help maximise the impact of innovation support across Europe. Unlocking the potential of using intellectual property rights as collateral could open additional routes to financing.

Innovative companies are facing difficulties to access and grow in the EU market. Making public and private procurement more innovation-friendly and raising public and private procurement investments in innovative solutions is therefore another objective of the European Innovation Act. Supporting innovative companies in developing and testing their innovations, both in state-of-the-art research and technological infrastructures and through regulatory sandboxes, are also important towards safely placing innovative products on the market. Enabling innovative companies to better attract and retain talent, including through attractive employee ownership schemes can help them grow in the EU market.

Excessive red tape and fragmentation of the EU Single Market is still a barrier for bringing innovations to the market. Innovation-proofing legislation, while it is under preparation or revision through an innovation stress test, could simplify and make the existing regulatory framework more-innovation friendly. Having a common definition across the EU for startups, scaleups and innovative companies could also help unlock their full potential and facilitate their operation across the EU Single Market.

How to get involved

The European Innovation Act affects a broad range of actors in the innovation ecosystem.  Everyone can contribute to the design of the European Innovation Act by participating in the online consultation and the call for evidence until 3 October 2025. 

The Commission is also having targeted consultations with innovative companies in the EU, both large ones and smaller ones, universities and other research organisations, research and technology infrastructures, the financial sector, the regulatory, standardisation, certification sectors, and public and private procurers. 

All contributions will be analysed and processed, to feed into the European Innovation Act. 

A separate public consultation has been launched on the 28th Regime, focusing on the EU corporate legal framework and looking into other challenges faced by innovative companies. This Commission proposal will help companies overcome barriers when setting up and operating across the Single Market. It will do so by providing companies with a single set of rules, including an EU corporate legal framework based on digital by default solutions.