A new drive to speed up, simplify and improve EU research and innovation policies
As part of the Commission’s new approach to better implementation and simplification, Ekaterina Zaharieva, Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation, is engaging directly with stakeholders through Implementation Dialogues. These high-level exchanges aim to identify challenges and opportunities in the implementation of EU policies and programmes, ensuring they work effectively on the ground.
Past implementation dialogues
Theme: Implementation and simplification of Horizon Europe, the EU research and innovation programme.
The dialogue, taking place during the EU Research and Innovation Days 2025, brought together beneficiaries of Horizon Europe, research support offices, university administrations and umbrella organisation active in the EU research and innovation policy to reflect on the progress made, remaining bottlenecks and planned measures for further simplification.
Theme: Aligning policy with the needs of Europe’s innovation community.
This dialogue, taking place at the second meeting of the European Startup and Scaleup Forum, brought together founders, investors and other innovation stakeholders to discuss potential building blocks of the forthcoming EU Startup and Scaleup Strategy. It covered topics such as access to finance, regulatory fragmentation and burdens, access to markets, skills and talent as well as access to infrastructure, data and services.
Documents
This report covers progress on key policy objectives, enforcement and implementation made in the field of startups, research and innovation during the period 1 January – 31 July 2025.