Elevating EU innovation through strategic investments and collaboration

Executive Summary

Significant investments in research and innovation (R&I) are essential to improving European competitiveness and leadership, boosting strategic autonomy, developing technological scalability in strategic areas, and advancing the green and digital transformation. Innovation is also a crucial part of building resilience in the face of crises as witnessed during the Covid-19 pandemic, when digital technologies proved to be essential to our society’s continued productivity.

DIGITALEUROPE has been actively advocating the integration of digital technologies and skills into Europe’s Framework Programmes for Research and Innovation (currently FP9). Digital technologies can act as a catalyst, supporting critical EU policy objectives, including bolstering resilience, boosting industrial competitiveness, facilitating the green transition, and developing digital skills. The EU’s innovation performance has improved by 8.5 percentage points in the past seven years. Horizon Europe has played a key role in advancing Europe’s global industrial competitiveness through its Pillar II. It has also enabled industry to team up with other stakeholders in the R&I ecosystem to deliver innovative results, for instance through public-private partnerships (PPPs).

However, when seen from a global standpoint, the EU still lags behind its global counterparts. Only 2.23% of the EU’s GDP is invested in R&I, falling behind the US, China and Japan. For a stronger and more competitive Europe, it is crucial to ramp up investment in innovative solutions, and to enable their deployment on a large scale in key sectors.

In line with DIGITALEUROPE’s proposed targets to be reached by 2030, we call for an ambitious FP10 – with an increased budget and more attractive conditions for industry participation. Active involvement of the digital and technology industry in the programme, both as a co-design actor and as future contributor, is essential:

• Investment in green digital technologies should be boosted through an increased Horizon Europe budget of €200 billion, aiming at a 25% digital target across all EU funding programmes and moving closer to the 85% goal of EU companies utilising information and communications technologies (ICT) to mitigate their environmental impact. The proposed budget will also contribute to closing the skills shortages gap by 2030.
• Industry’s expertise, talent pool and ability to bring advanced innovations to the market make it an essential stakeholder in R&I programmes. FP10 should seek to incentivise industry participation, including through technology-readiness-level (TRL) balance and more attractive legal and contractual conditions.
  All relevant stakeholders must be included by incentivising successful cooperation initiatives, streamlining application procedures that open up to smaller actors, and ensuring better coordination with other funding programmes.
• All relevant stakeholders must be included by incentivising successful cooperation initiatives, streamlining application procedures that open up to smaller actors, and ensuring better coordination with other funding programmes.