Six finalists for the 2025 European Innovation Procurement Awards: from AI parking monitoring to emission free construction

Brussels, February 11th 2025

Summary

›The European Commission has named six finalists for the 2025 European Innovation Procurement Awards, with winners to be announced at the EIC Summit on 2 April 2025.
›The finalists span two award categories: Innovation Procurement Initiative and Facing Societal Challenges under Net Zero Industry Procurement.
›Prize money for each category is split between first, second and third places at EUR 75,000, EUR 50,000 and EUR 25,000 respectively.
›Projects highlighted include AI based parking monitoring in Prague, smart grid expansion in Scheveningen, pre commercial soil remediation in Italy and Spain, circular construction tools, a hydrogen double auction market mechanism and a fully electric construction machinery pool in Stockholm.
›The awards underline the EU effort to use public procurement as a demand side lever for innovation but practical barriers to scale remain and claimed impacts will need independent verification.

European Innovation Procurement Awards 2025: finalists and context

On 11 February 2025 the European Commission, through the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency, published the six finalists for the 2025 European Innovation Procurement Awards. The awards recognise public and private buyers that used procurement to stimulate or deploy innovative solutions addressing societal or industrial challenges. Winners in each of the two award categories will be announced at the EIC Summit on 2 April 2025 and will receive cash prizes for the top three places.

How the awards are organised and what they aim to reward

The European Innovation Procurement Awards are one of four prizes run under the EIC prizes portfolio. They are intended to highlight procurement as an instrument for market creation and for bringing research results into deployment. The awards cover two categories. The Innovation Procurement Initiative category recognises procurement actions and longer term strategies that trigger innovation procurement and may include procurement of R and D services or procurement to buy and deploy innovative solutions. The Facing Societal Challenges category for 2024 25 focuses on Net Zero Industry Procurement and looks for procurements that advance circularity, energy efficiency, use of renewables and reduced greenhouse gas emissions in industry.

Prize amounts and event:Winners will be announced at the EIC Summit on 2 April 2025. In each category the first place receives EUR 75,000, second place EUR 50,000 and third place EUR 25,000.

Category	First place	Second place	Third place	Award ceremony
Innovation Procurement Initiative	EUR 75,000	EUR 50,000	EUR 25,000	EIC Summit, 2 April 2025
Facing Societal Challenges Net Zero Industry Procurement	EUR 75,000	EUR 50,000	EUR 25,000	EIC Summit, 2 April 2025

The six finalists

An independent jury selected six projects that the Commission describes as pioneering uses of procurement to bring or scale innovation. The finalists are grouped under the two award categories.

Innovation Procurement Initiative category

CameraCar

Location: Prague. CameraCar used procurement to acquire AI based technology for enhanced monitoring of parking zones. The system integrates traffic sign verification and road surface assessment to improve enforcement and urban mobility management. The public procurement bought an outcome based solution that combines computer vision with regulatory compliance checks.

EMS LLS

Location: Living Lab Scheveningen, the Netherlands. This initiative expanded a smart electricity grid in the living lab to reduce energy congestion. The procurement combined hardware and control logic to integrate semi autonomous control mechanisms for better energy forecasting, planning and distribution, with an explicit aim to ensure fair allocation of capacity among users.

Joint POSIDON PCP

Location: Italy and Spain. POSIDON ran a pre commercial procurement to develop new methods for decontaminating polluted land, specifically targeting petroleum hydrocarbons and heavy metal contamination in soils. The PCP approach funded R and D phases to produce and test solutions that the procurers would later be able to deploy or scale. The project set out sustainability oriented criteria for land restoration.

Facing Societal Challenges category Net Zero Industry Procurement

CABRIO TRIPTYCH

This project offers three tools to make public construction projects more environmentally friendly. It includes circular selection criteria for procurement, a planning tool for local authorities to set and track sustainability goals, and technical specifications for circular materials intended to support more circular construction.

H2Global

H2Global proposes a market mechanism to accelerate the renewable hydrogen market by using a double auction system. The double auction model is intended to reconcile the high cost of early production with market affordability by matching producers and buyers through price discovery and contracted volumes.

Net Zero Persikan

Location: Stockholm. Net Zero Persikan demonstrated a fully electric machinery pool at a development site to deliver emission free groundworks. The project offers a model that municipalities can replicate to remove diesel emissions from site works and scale zero emission construction practices.

Concepts and procurement approaches explained

Innovation procurement:Innovation procurement refers to public or private purchasing practices that explicitly seek new or substantially improved goods, services or solutions. Rather than buying only off the shelf products, the procurer can procure R and D services, outcomes, or set project specifications that create a market pull for innovative suppliers. It is seen by the Commission as a demand side tool to accelerate commercialisation of research and increase access for start ups and SMEs to procurement markets.

Pre commercial procurement (PCP):PCP is a procurement method where public authorities procure R and D services that include several development phases such as prototype development and testing. The public buyer remains free to acquire the end product later through a separate procurement. PCP aims to share development risk and stimulate suppliers to develop solutions meeting public needs.

Double auction market mechanism:A double auction involves simultaneous bidding by sellers and buyers. In the hydrogen project context, it is proposed to discover a price that can match producers who need volume certainty and buyers who seek price caps. This mechanism can reduce market risk for early producers but its success depends on liquidity, credible demand commitments and regulatory support.

Why these awards matter and what to watch for

Procurement can be an effective lever to create lead markets for technologies that otherwise struggle to bridge from prototype to adoption. The finalists illustrate several forms of demand side innovation policy, from PCPs targeting polluted soils to procurement that buys outcomes such as emission free construction services.

However there are practical limits and risks. Public procurement rules and budget cycles can be rigid, public buyers vary in technical and contracting capacity, and standards or interoperability issues can slow scaling across jurisdictions. The prize money provides recognition but is small relative to the capital needs of many of the solutions. Claims about market creation and replicability will need follow up evidence on deployment, cost reductions and uptake by other procurers.

Commissioner comment:The Commission quoted Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation Ekaterina Zaharieva, saying: With the European Innovation Procurement Awards, we celebrate visionary efforts that use procurement as a catalyst to address society's most urgent challenges. These projects demonstrate how smart purchasing is key for propelling groundbreaking innovations from SMEs and start ups in Europe.

Eligibility, administration and next steps

The EUIPA is run by the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency, and is part of the EIC prizes portfolio under Horizon Europe. The awards accept entries from public and private procurers, individuals and entities established in EU Member States and Horizon Europe associated countries. The awards follow a set of eligibility and evaluation criteria including transformation, uptake, collaboration, access for innovative SMEs and societal impact. The jury evaluation is independent.

How winners are selected:Applications are assessed against criteria such as the extent to which procurement stimulated innovation, replicability and scalability, cooperation and ecosystem building, facilitation of SME and start up access to procurement markets, and demonstrable societal impact aligned with green and digital priorities.

The Commission published the finalists on 11 February 2025 and will announce winners on 2 April 2025 at the EIC Summit in Brussels. For further information organisers provided a contact email EISMEA EUIPAwards at ec europa eu and a dedicated EUIPA webpage.

Critical perspective and what to monitor after the awards

Recognition is useful for signalling but it is not a substitute for rigorous evidence of impact. After the awards, independent monitoring should verify whether shortlisted projects achieved the deployment and scaling outcomes they claim. Relevant indicators include procurement volumes, cost reductions, number of municipalities or procurers adopting the solution, emissions reductions in the case of Net Zero projects, and private sector investment mobilised.

Policymakers should also watch for common barriers: procurement contracting capacity, long procurement lead times, limited resale or secondary markets, lack of standard technical specifications and insufficient coordination across local and national authorities. If procurement is to become a routine tool to drive innovation the EU will need sustained support for capacity building in public buyers and parallel policy work on standards and market design.

Resources and contact

The EU published details of the EUIPA competition, including rules and evaluation criteria, on the EIC and EISMEA websites. Questions about the awards can be sent to EISMEA EUIPAwards at ec europa eu. The finalists and winners are publicised via the EIC Summit and EIC communication channels.