Mariya Gabriel, Commissioner for Innovation Research, Culture, Education and Youth

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Mariya Gabriel, Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth Last July 5, the European Commission presented the new European Innovation Agenda which, according to you, “will ensure that innovators, start-ups and emerging and growing companies can carry out their innovative projects to become world leaders in the field of innovation”. What are the main measures included in the new Agenda to achieve these objectives?

The New European Innovation Agenda (NEIA) is the result of close cooperation with our stakeholders, Europe’s innovators, who are willing and capable of leading the new wave of innovation: deep-tech innovation.

We want to become the global powerhouse for deep-tech innovations and startups for the next generation of researchers, founders, and innovators to create and scale-up in Europe.

The new Agenda emphasizes our determination to seek solutions to the most pressing societal and economic challenges through deep-tech innovation rather than regulation. Because deep tech ventures strive to solve many of our deepest challenges, the economic, business, and societal effect of deeptech innovation will be felt everywhere. It focuses on five flagships.

The first one will mobilise institutional and private investors in Europe to invest in, and benefit from the scaling of European deep-tech start-ups.

The second one is enabling innovation through experimentation spaces and public procurement. This flagship will facilitate innovation through improved framework conditions including experimental approaches to regulation (e.g., regulatory sandboxes, test beds, living labs and innovation procurement).

The third flagship consists in Accelerating and strengthening innovation

in European Innovation Ecosystems across the EU. We will support the creation of regional innovation valleys and help Member States and regions mobilize at least EUR 10 billion to concrete interregional innovation projects, including in deep-tech innovation for key EU priorities. It will also support Member States to foster innovation in all regions through the integrated use of cohesion policy and Horizon Europe instruments.

The fourth one is Fostering, attracting, and retaining deep tech talents. This flagship will ensure the development and flow of essential deep tech talents in and to the EU through a series of initiatives including an innovation intern scheme for startups and scale-ups, an EU talent pool to help startups and innovative businesses find non-EU talent, a women entrepreneurship and leadership scheme and a pioneering work on startup employees’ stock options.

Finally, the fifth flagship consists in Improving policy making tools. This flagship will be the key for development and use of robust, comparable data sets and a shared definitions (startups, scale-up) that can inform policies at all levels across the EU and for ensuring better policy coordination at the European level through the EIC Forum.

Only by involving all players in the innovation ecosystems we will be able to achieve the objectives of the New European Innovation Agenda for establishing a truly pan-European innovation ecosystem where no one is left behind and position Europe as a worldwide leader in the wave of deep-tech innovation by using its unique talents, intellectual assets, and industrial capabilities in a united effort.

According to the Innovation Scoreboard 2021, Spain loses 2 positions in the European innovation ran-

king compared to the previous year, even though we are well positioned in scientific production. What measures does the new European Innovation Agenda include to bring research closer to the market and market needs closer to research?

Spain, like many other EU countries, faces challenges related to building robust innovation ecosystems, due to existing variations in innovation performance between regions. The most recent Regional Innovation Scoreboard showed a variation in performance between Spanish regions, with the overall Regional Innovation Index in the country ranging from 39% to 119% of the baseline average EU score.

The NEIA flagship on accelerating and strengthening innovation in European Innovation Ecosystems across the EU and addressing the innovation divide aims to accelerate innovation and unlock excellence across the EU through various tools. It focuses on creating the basis for the emergence of connected regional innovation valleys across the EU, involving regions with a lower innovation performance, by building on strategic areas of regional strength and specialisation. The focus is on a holistic approach to the strengthening innovation ecosystems, including closing the gap between research and market.

The flagship will launch an initiative to foster connected regional deep-tech innovation valleys across the EU. It will be launched by the end of 2023 and identify up to 100 regions committed to enhance the coordination and directionality of their R&I investment and policies at regional level. It will build on Smart Specialisation Strategies and, where applicable, on the participation in the Partnerships for Regional Innovation (PRIs), a pilot involving 74 EU territories and 63 NUTS2 region that was launched by the European Commission and the European Committee of the Regions in April 2022.

With funding of EUR 100 million from Horizon Europe and EUR 70 million from the Interregional Innovation Investments (I3) instrument under the ERDF, support will be provided for interregional collaboration activities that feature collaboration between at least one less innovative and another more innovative region.

Supported actions will include market uptake of research, support companies in scaling up their ideas, as well as deploying and demonstrating deep technologies in real world environments and with end users, access to cross border infrastructure and expertise, exchange of staff, training and skills development and developing standards and regulations through sandboxes and test beds. Successful applicants under the joint Horizon and Interregional Innovation Investment Instrument calls will also be recognised as a ‘regional innovation valley’.

The NEIA Flagship on ‘enabling deep tech innovation through experimentation spaces and public procurement’ focuses on facilitating innovation through improved framework conditions including experimental approaches to regulation, as the so-called regulatory sandboxes, living labs and innovation procurement.

We, the Commission, will issue a guidance document in the first half of 2023 that will clarify relevant use cases of regulatory sandboxes, test beds and living labs in order to support policymakers and innovators in their approach to experimentation in the EU. A staff working document will provide an overview of the main existing experimentation clauses and regulatory sandboxes in EU law, and support will be provided for innovators to identify areas and establish an experimentation space, such as regulatory sandboxes, living labs or test beds, which could facilitate the deployment of disruptive technologies through future calls.

We will also support the formation of an innovation procurement specialist advisory service. This will act as an intermediary between public procurers

and innovative suppliers. We will also support the creation of living labs and incubators for example, to connect innovators and public administrators to provide innovative solutions in areas of public need.

Finally, we will update its EU wide benchmarking of national policy frameworks and investments on innovation procurement in Europe and assess take up of the innovation partnership procedure within the procurement directive alongside that of pre commercial procurements, which fall outside of the procurement directives and international procurement agreements.

Spain is one of the most active countries in the development of science and technology parks in Europe, where there are 51 science and technology parks in operation in 15 regions that house 8,145 innovative companies and entities, of which some 800 are start-ups, employ 189,000 professionals and 27% are dedicated to the ICT sector. One of the objectives of the new European Innovation Agenda is to contribute to the creation of “regional innovation valleys”. What role can science and technology parks play in the creation of these valleys?

Science and Technology parks are important actors in innovation ecosystems as they bring together different regional and multiregional ecosystem

players and therefore, they have the potential to contribute to the establishment of regional innovation valleys.

For instance, in some regions science-industry linkages are supported by science parks and innovation advisors (comparable to technology transfer officers) that advise university researchers on the commercialisation of inventions.

Interactions between research and industry actors are often enhanced through collaborative infrastructures such as science and technology parks and a large variety of policy instruments are used to support the interaction between innovation ecosystem actors.

The importance of science and technology parks is also clear from their involvement in several EU initiatives.

One good example is given by the Digital Innovation Hubs, as a network of around 200 European Digital Innovation Hubs (EDIHs) will increase hubs’ capacities especially in areas such as AI, Cybersecurity, Supercomputing and advanced digital skills.

As another example, the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs) are partnerships bringing together businesses, research and academia to create a fertile environment for innovation. KICs create a

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Parks of Spain (APTE) is to contribute to the development of new disruptive technologies and the digital transformation of companies and organizations and to promote STEM vocations, especially among girls. To this end, it has launched the Spanish Technological Platform for Digital Technologies (DISRUPTIVE) and the “Science and Technology in Feminine” program. What initiatives are included in the agenda or among the activities of your commissioner to support “Deep tech” and contribute to the gender gap in the STEM field?

Fostering women’s full participation in our European society is one of my longstanding commitments, with gender equality and promotion of women’s talents at the heart of my actions. pan-European network supporting the development of innovative products and services in all sectors, the creation or acceleration of companies, and the training of new entrepreneurs.

Then, there are the EU Industrial Alliances which focus on innovation and deployment in strategic areas for the European economy (including Raw Materials; Clean Hydrogen; Batteries; Circular Plastics; Industrial Data, Edge and Cloud; Processors and Semiconductor Technologies; Renewable and Low-Carbon Fuels Value Chain).

Another example is the Open Innovation Test Beds (OITB) - entities, established in at least three Member States or Associated Countries, offering access to physical facilities, capabilities and services required for the development, testing and upscaling of nanotechnology and advanced materials in industrial environments.

Then there are the Hubs for Circularity (H4C) which will be a key instrument to advance the research and innovation agenda of European industries towards the Green Deal’s objectives.

Finally, the Hydrogen Valleys are large-scale projects bringing together industrial and research initiatives to

carry out pilot projects across the complete hydrogen value chain.

The role of national, regional and local innovation partners, including science and technology parks, in developing pan-European innovation ecosystem will be crucial, not least in terms of communication and dissemination of initiatives, but also in terms of coordinating and integrating initiatives.

Such initiatives are also likely to play an important role in the creation and development of regional innovation valleys, particularly by supporting the development of coherent national innovation agendas, improving access to finance, creating a more supportive innovation framework, and connecting innovation ecosystems.

Regional innovation valleys will further complement the existing activities under Regional Innovation Partnerships (PRIs) and Smart Specialization Strategies (S3). In terms of investment, the Structural Funds instrument for Interregional Innovation Investments (I3) is helping networks of regions set up and to fund joint innovation activities focused on deep tech innovation in Europe.

One of the objectives of the Association of Science and Technology

In line with the European Strategy for Universities and in the light of the European Year of Youth in 2022, we are implementing a full range of activities to strengthen women and girls’ participation more specifically in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields, where they remain underrepresented. For instance, during the European Year of Youth 2022 and on the International Women Day 8 March, I launched the #SHEU LEADS campaign to celebrate the achievements of young women (under 30 years old).

Various projects funded under Horizon 2020, address the gender gap in STEM, bridging education, research and innovation, focusing on entrepreneurship, and nurturing the future women innovators.

Under Horizon Europe, several initiatives are targeting the participation of women and girls in the STEM-related studies and careers, including a STE(A) M roadmap for science education, promoting the use of applied arts and creative thinking in STEM education (the “A” in STE(A)M) acronym) with a particular focus on increasing women’s participation and deconstructing gender stereotypes. More initiatives will be launched over the following months.

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A plenary session at this year’s Research and Innovation Days annual event discussed gender equality in STEM education and careers. Indeed, we need the commitment of all actors to achieve gender equality and gender-equal participation in STEM fields, working with schools and universities and involving the private sector.

Our work goes beyond strengthening women’s and girls’ participation in STEM fields. We have undertaken significant steps to achieve gender equality in Research and Innovation careers.

Horizon Europe is one of the most proactive EU programmes regarding the promotion of gender equality.

More specifically, we set a new eligibility criterion for participating in the programme. Public bodies, research organisations and higher education institutions need to have a Gender Equality Plan in place to receive funding from Horizon Europe. This requirement has already triggered a wave of institutional changes in organisations across Member States and countries associated to the programme. With the launch of a new award, the EU Award for Gender Equality Champions, we want to reward academic and research organisations that have already made the most progress through their gender equality plans and can further drive the change.

In addition, a women entrepreneurship and leadership scheme will support early-stage women-led tech startups including through an enhanced WomenTech EU call. This will feed into other EU initiatives such as ‘Women4Cyber’, and potentially national, acceleration programmes, to speed up the growth of women-led companies.

Programmes such as the EIT’s Women2Invest , will further support efforts to increase diversity by helping investors connect to, and recruit from a more diverse pool of talent.

APTE launched in February this year the APTENISA Program, a program co-financed by ENISA and whose objective is to promote the generation of 100 new technology-based

“Science and Technology parks are important actors in innovation ecosystems as they bring together different regional and multiregional ecosystem players and therefore, they have the potential to contribute to the establishment of regional innovation valleys” business ideas and the acceleration of 36 startups, 5 of which participated in the last edition of Startup Olé. The program is being developed simultaneously and coordinated through the same methodology in 10 science and technology parks located in 8 regions and includes the implementation of a network of investors to close the circle and ensure that the program offers them a complete support framework.

What programs will be implemented in the new European Innovation Agenda to improve access to financing for startups?

The New European Innovation Agenda will complement the Commission’s initiatives to support innovative SMEs such as initiatives by the European Innovation Council (EIC) to boost innovation and deep-tech in Europe by focusing on accelerating the growth of deep-tech start-ups in the EU. First, a new EIC ScaleUp 100 action will identify a cohort of a hundred deep tech startups with the potential to scale up as global leaders or potential unicorns from the portfolio of the EIC as well as other EU programmes. By mid-2023 these companies will start receiving enhanced support to develop their strategy and leadership team, protect IP, connect to strategic investors and partners, expand internationally, and obtain links to national scale up support. Besides direct support to companies, the initiative will also share best practice amongst Member States and across Europe-wide networks.

The new ScaleUp 100 initiative will

identify, promote, and support the growth of 100 promising deep tech companies that show the potential to become ‘unicorns’ (with a value of over €1 billion). The winning entity or consortia will receive European Commission’s funding to help companies develop their corporate and leadership strategies, reach strategic investors and partners, expand internationally, and obtain access to other scale-up support programmes.

Second, we have proposed rebalancing debt-equity incentives through the debt-equity bias reduction allowance (DEBRA) on corporate income tax that would increase the availability of equity and make it more attractive for companies by reducing the cost of new equity across the EU. Third, in line with the objectives of the Commission’s 2020 capital markets union (CMU) Action Plan, we, the Commission, will also propose a Listings Act in the second half of 2022.

The Listings Act will simplify and ease both initial and ongoing listing requirements for certain types of companies, in order to reduce costs and increase legal certainty for issuers, while safeguarding investor protection and market integrity.

Finally, the European Investment Fund will invest in SMEs that are going public or intend to do so. This will attract additional private investments to support SMEs. Interview in Spanish