The Commissioner for Budget, Anti-Fraud and Public Administration, Piotr Serafin, said: “In just one year, STEP has shown that the EU budget can be more flexible. Project promoters benefit from optimized support and access to EU funds focused on the strategic technologies that the EU needs to develop. The experience with STEP can be useful for the preparation of our next EU budget.”
So far, €9.1 billion of EU funds have been mobilized for STEP in five programmes directly managed by the Commission, namely the Digital Europe Programme, the European Defence Fund, the EU4Health Programme, Horizon Europe and the Innovation Fund. A further €6.1 billion in EU funding will be mobilized for STEP thanks to the reprogramming of cohesion policy funds by 11 pioneering EU Member States.
Improved and streamlined access to funding
So far, around 60 calls for proposals have been launched at EU and national level, of which around 40 are still open for submission.
Promoting high-potential EU projects for better access to finance
The STEP portal currently shows the first 142 high-potential projects that have been awarded the STEP label by the Commission. Project promoters are informed about funding opportunities and advisory services, while their projects are made visible to private and public investors, including implementing partners such as the European Investment Bank (EIB) Group or national promotional banks.
Some prominent examples of STEP seals awarded by the Commission in 23 Member States include:
- Digital technology: OpenEuroLLM will bring together EU startups, research labs and supercomputing hosting facilities from across the EU to train the first family of open-source large-scale artificial intelligence models covering all official languages and future EU languages.
- Clean Tech: Energy Observer 2 of France and the Netherlands will be the world’s first hydrogen-powered cargo ship, featuring advanced cryogenic tanks to store hydrogen and fuel cell technology to reduce sea freight emissions by 98 percent.
- Biotechnology: PHARMSD 3.0 from Portugal aims to set a new standard for continuous pharmaceutical manufacturing with the optimization of spray drying, a method that converts liquid drug formulations into stable powders.
STEP aims to mobilize private investment for high-potential EU projects and mitigate risk. The STEP Taskforce reaches out to private investors to promote STEP Seals projects, increase their visibility and identify investment pathways.
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Further links
👉 https://commission.europa.eu/index_de
Photo: pixabay
