Building the evidence base for Europe’s future innovation policy: Invest Europe recognised as key data provider in European Startup & Scaleup Scoreboard

Invest Europe’s close cooperation with the European Commission has once again been recognised through its contribution to the European Startup & Scaleup Scoreboard (ESSS) - a flagship benchmarking tool launched under the EU Startup and Scaleup Strategy.

The Scoreboard, commissioned by the European Innovation Council (EIC) and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA), tracks the performance of EU Member States across 36 indicators, covering areas such as finance, regulation, talent, infrastructure and innovation. It is intended to serve as a key evidence base for future policymaking, including the forthcoming European Innovation Act (EIA).

Invest Europe is explicitly recognised by the European Commission as one of the core data providers underpinning the Scoreboard, alongside other leading sources.

Our contribution is particularly significant in the financing pillar, where our data supports indicators measuring venture capital activity across Europe, including the following indicators:

• seed, startup and other early-stage VC investment (% of GDP),

• later-stage VC investment (% of GDP),

• local VC funds (as a share of GDP),

• insurance and pension VC fund commitments as a share of GDP,

• government VC fund commitments (as a share of GDP), and

• non-local VC fund commitments (as a share of GDP)

These data points will contribute to and support a more robust and comprehensive picture of Europe’s financing environment, to better reflect how capital flows across the ecosystem to enhance innovation.

The inclusion of Invest Europe in this flagship initiative further underlines our role as a trusted provider of market intelligence to European institutions. It also highlights the growing importance of industry-driven data in designing policies that effectively support innovation, private capital and high-growth companies.

As Europe seeks to close the gap with global competitors, reliable data has become increasingly important in this sense. This is an objective that Invest Europe is fully committed to supporting.