Brussels, 17 Febriary 2025
Today, the Commission has launched a call for evidence, inviting all interested stakeholders to contribute to the future EU Startup and Scaleup Strategy. The strategy will improve conditions for innovative startups and scaleups, enabling faster and simpler growth within the Single Market. It will address challenges such as access to finance, markets and talent, as well as regulatory and bureaucratic hurdles and market fragmentation. It will also facilitate access to state-of-the-art infrastructure, knowledge and services.
Ekaterina Zaharieva, Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation, said: “We must vigorously confront the obstacles startups face when they want to grow and scale up across the EU. They are the backbone of innovation and key to our competitiveness and prosperity. We want to hear from innovators, businesses, investors, policymakers, researchers, universities and all interested parties, to shape an effective and comprehensive strategy to support our startups and scaleups.”
Supporting startups and scaleups, and boosting research and innovation, are among the Commission’s priorities to close the innovation gap and enhance competitiveness.
The EU Startup and Scaleup Strategy is a flagship action of the Competitiveness Compass, introduced in January 2025. It will lead to tangible measures, including the future European Innovation Act and a new EU-wide legal status, known as the ‘28th regime’, that will provide a harmonised set of rules to help innovative companies grow.
The Call for Evidence is available on the Commission’s ‘Have your Say‘ portal in all official EU languages. Submissions are open until 17 March.
Take part in the call for evidence.
EU Start-up and Scale-up Strategy
Have your say – Public Consultations and Feedback – Published initiatives
EU Start-up and Scale-up Strategy
- In preparation
- Call for evidence
Feedback period: 17 February 2025 – 17 March 2025
Feedback: Open
Commission adoption: Planned for 2nd quarter 2025
Summary
Start-ups and scale-ups are crucial for Europe’s competitiveness. They often introduce to the market breakthrough innovative solutions capable of tackling the existing societal challenges. However, they still face barriers affecting their growth, including difficulties in accessing private capital in the EU and selling seamlessly across the single market. This initiative will propose a set of policy, financial and legislative measures to improve and simplify framework conditions for start-ups and scale-ups.
The Commission would like to hear your views.
This call for evidence is open for feedback. Your input will be taken into account as we further develop and fine-tune this initiative. Feedback received will be published on this site and therefore must adhere to the feedback rules.
Call for evidence – Ares(2025)1232781- (374.3 KB – PDF – 3 pages) – Download