What is the New European Innovation Agenda?
Innovation, and in particular its new wave of deep-tech innovation, is the European reply to bring down greenhouse gas emissions, to make our economies more digital and to guarantee Europe’s food, energy and raw materials security.
The New European Innovation Agenda, adopted on 5 July 2022, aims to position Europe at the forefront of the new wave of deep tech innovation and start-ups. It will help Europe to develop new technologies to address the most pressing societal challenges, and to bring them on the market through innovation procurement, a pivotal demand side instrument to modernise public services with innovative solutions while boosting the growth of innovative companies in Europe. . Europe wants to be the place where the best talent work hand in hand with the best companies and where deep tech innovation thrives and creates breakthrough innovative solutions across the continent that are deployed widely by innovation-friendly customers.
Flagships
The New European Innovation Agenda focuses on five flagships:
- Funding Scale-Ups will mobilise institutional and other private investors in Europe to invest in, and benefit from the scaling of European deep-tech start-ups.
- Enabling innovation through experimentation spaces and public procurement will facilitate innovation through improved framework conditions including experimental approaches to regulation (e.g. regulatory sandboxes, test beds, living labs and innovation procurement).
- Accelerating and strengthening innovation in European Innovation Ecosystems across the EU and addressing the innovation divide will support the creation of regional innovation valleys and help Member States and regions direct at least €10 billion to concrete interregional innovation projects, including in deep-tech innovation for key EU priorities. It will also support Member States to foster innovation in all regions through the integrated use of cohesion policy and Horizon Europe instruments.
- Fostering, attracting and retaining talents will ensure the development and flow of essential deep tech talents in and to the EU through a series of initiatives including an innovation intern scheme for startups and scale-ups, an EU talent pool to help startups and innovative businesses find non-EU talent, a women entrepreneurship and leadership scheme and a pioneering work on startup employees’ stock options.
- Improving policy making tools will be the key for development and use of robust, comparable data sets and a shared definitions (startups, scale-up) that can inform policies at all levels across the EU and for ensuring better policy coordination at the European level through the European Innovation Council Forum.
Building on the substantive work that have been done already to foster innovation in the EU, the New European Innovation Agenda aims to accelerate the development and scaling up of innovation across the Union through a coherent set of 25 actions.
New European Innovation Agenda roadmap
A new European Innovation Agenda to spearhead the new innovation wave (Factsheet)
Member States and Associated Countries supporting NEIA
Through the EIC Forum, a group of Member States and Associated Countries' public authorities and bodies in charge of innovation policies and programmes, were asked to provide brief descriptions of the main actions they are undertaking or planning to undertake in support of one or more of the five flagships of the NEIA.
European Innovation Ecosystems projects
Under Horizon Europe, the European Innovation Ecosystems projects will contribute to three flagships of the Agenda: scaling up deep-tech innovative companies; enabling innovation through experimentation spaces and innovative public procurement; and strengthening innovation ecosystems across the EU and addressing the innovation divide. See the factsheets for more information.
New European Innovation Agenda: the first EU-funded projects on the starting blocks
New European Innovation Agenda: the first EU-funded projects on the starting blocks
New European Innovation Agenda: the first EU-funded projects on the starting blocks
New European Innovation Agenda: the first EU-funded projects on the starting blocks
Publications
Report on the state of play of the new European innovation agenda.
Projects under the European innovation ecosystems work programme in support of the new European innovation agenda
Latest
Interested in how your country is encouraging the public sector to be a more innovation-friendly buyer? Check out the country profiles of all 30 benchmarked countries.
The innovation performance of the European Union continues to improve at a steady pace, reaching a 10% increase since 2017 and a growth of 0.5% between 2023 and 2024.
