EU launches first European Innovation Council funding calls

On 9 April 2021 the European Commission opened the first competitive funding calls under the newly established European Innovation Council. The calls include the EIC Accelerator strand providing more than one billion euros to support the later stages of technology development and scaling of start-ups and small and medium sized enterprises. The Commission also opened the EIC Pathfinder with a dedicated budget of about €168 million aimed at early stage, high risk research that could underpin future breakthrough technologies.

What is being offered

How the Accelerator financing model works

The Commission positions the EIC Accelerator as a catalyst to 'crowd in' private investors by de-risking and validating technologies. That outcome depends on many factors including the stage of the company, the size and timing of the equity round, investor appetite for long horizon deep tech and the quality of subsequent due diligence. Past EU innovation pilots show mixed results in converting public seal of approval into sustained private follow-on investment across all regions and sectors.

Eligibility, selection and support pathway

The EIC targets companies with technologies tested and validated in laboratory settings or relevant environments. The involved programmes were designed to handle the full cycle from high risk early research to market transition and scale. In practice applicants typically pass through staged selection steps. Short proposals and pitch materials are used to screen candidates and successful applicants are invited to submit full applications. The final selection step often involves expert interviews or pitching sessions before a jury.

Context, track record and caveats

The European Innovation Council is a key novelty within Horizon Europe and was launched as a single point of support for high risk, high impact innovation. The Commission framed the EIC as building on a pilot phase from 2018 to 2020 and predecessor instruments such as the SME Instrument and Future and Emerging Technologies. Those earlier schemes supported several thousand companies and a few hundred research projects. The EIC 2021-2027 envelope exceeds €10 billion.

A few practical caveats are worth noting. First, the scale of capital needed to make some deep tech ventures commercially viable can exceed public equity commitments and hinge on later stage private investors. Securing a first public equity cheque does not guarantee follow-on private capital. Second, administrative and reporting requirements linked to EU funding can be relatively heavy and may be mismatched with some fast moving start-up timelines. Third, the ambition to be a 'one-stop' instrument requires significant implementation capacity across evaluation, due diligence, legal and financial structuring to move rapidly from selection to signed agreements.

Background and where to get more information

The EIC was launched in March 2021 under Horizon Europe with a mandate to support innovations from laboratory research through to scaling and international market entry. The European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency is the operational body that manages many EIC activities. Applicants and interested stakeholders can consult the EIC website and related Funding and Tenders Portal entries for detailed call documentation, templates and deadlines.

The EIC combines grant support for early and mid development activities with an equity instrument intended to act as a public co-investor. That combination is novel for the Commission at this scale. Whether it materially changes Europe’s deep tech funding landscape depends on implementation details, the speed of investment decisions, the EIC Fund’s ability to attract co-investors and on follow-on private capital markets across EU member states.