New Innovation Agenda: Council adopts conclusions

The Council has adopted conclusions setting out an innovation policy to position the EU as a global leader.

 Innovation plays a crucial role in Europe’s competitiveness, in achieving the green and digital transitions, and in addressing societal challenges and ensuring the well-being of its citizens.

The recent crises have shown the need for the EU to support an open strategic autonomy in order to curb the dependencies and vulnerabilities that affect our industry. We have to strengthen the EU’s own capacity in strategic areas. This will not be possible without ambitious investments in innovation.

Vladimír Balaš, Czech Minister for Education, Youth and Sport

The current geo-political context highlights the EU’s need to reassess its approach to investing in innovation. Innovation is a strategic stimulus for economic development in these challenging times defined by the economic recovery from the COVID-19 crisis, the consequences of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and considerations for a more circular, digitalised and resource-efficient economy. 

The Council underlines the importance of adapting to the new wave of innovation and emphasises the need to boost synergies among existing funding programmes and initiatives. Access to finance should enable innovators, including deep tech startups, to take advantage of the single market and attract new institutional investors in order to strengthen financial and capital markets and commercialise and scale up deep tech companies.

The conclusions propose measures to improve the regulatory innovation environment, including a call for member states and the Commission, in cooperation with relevant stakeholders, to develop a common policy agenda to advance the coordination of innovation policies.