Turning Europe’s innovation ambition into reality: Invest Europe strengthens cooperation with European Commission on the innovation ecosystem

Europe’s ambition to become a global powerhouse for startups and scaleups sits at the centre of the European agenda, and access to the right financing to grow and innovate will be key in the success of the set direction of travel.

As such, the close and constructive cooperation between Invest Europe, the Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation Ekaterina Zaharieva, her Cabinet and the European Commission’s Research and Innovation arm (DG RTD) is playing an increasingly important role in shaping the policy framework supporting Europe’s ecosystem.

Aligning policy ambition with market reality

As part of this ongoing engagement, Invest Europe’s CEO, Eric de Montgolfier, met with Commissioner Zaharieva for an in-depth exchange on how to strengthen Europe’s innovation ecosystem and unlock greater investment into high-growth, high-potential European companies.

The exchange, spanning key issues such as EU-Inc., the Capital Markets Union (CMU), the European Institutional Investors Pact for Innovation (EIIPI), the SME definition, the Undertaking in Difficulty (UID) framework and M&A dynamics, highlighted the challenges and the scale of the opportunity:

• Europe already has the building blocks, the priority now is to make them work at scale. Europe does not need to reinvent the wheel. It already has companies, investors and capital, but they are held back by fragmentation, complexity and weak scaling conditions. The priority should be to make the system more usable, connected and scalable.

• Policy must be market-compatible. Private capital is part of the solution. Whether the issue is institutional investment, public funding tools, or regulatory definitions, the common thread is the same: Europe will only mobilise more capital into innovation if the framework reflects the realities of investment structures, risk allocation and fund ecosystems.

• Coherence and speed matter as much as ambition. The impact of the ambitious Commission's agenda will depend on whether the initiatives are implemented consistently and delivered fast enough. If initiatives are diluted, fragmented, or misaligned with each other, Europe will continue to lose time, capital and companies.

We share the same priorities: translating policy into tangible improvements in the operating environment for innovative companies and enabling more effective deployment of private capital into them.

Reducing cross-border complexity and regulatory barriers goes hand in hand with sending a strong signal that Europe is committed to building a more competitive and investor-friendly ecosystem, one that reinforces its attractiveness as a place to build, scale and invest.

A window of opportunity

Europe is at a turning point. The policy framework is taking shape and the sense of urgency is growing. What comes next will determine whether Europe can translate ambition into scale.

For us at Invest Europe, continuing and deepening the cooperation with the European Commission is central to this effort, to ensure that policy delivers tangible outcomes: more capital deployed, more companies scaled, more jobs, growth and innovation across Europe.