Driving prosperity via competitiveness, research and innovation

Competitiveness Fund

Powering Europe’s competitiveness will be the European Competitiveness Fund. With it, we will invest in strategic technologies to benefit the entire single market, as recommended in the Letta and Draghi reports. The fund will simplify and accelerate EU funding and catalyse private and public investment. It will operate under one rulebook and offer a single gateway to funding applicants. It will focus its support on four areas

• clean transition and decarbonisation
• digital transition
• health, biotech, agriculture and bioeconomy
• defence and space.

Horizon Europe

In close connection with the European Competitiveness Fund, the renowned EU research framework- Horizon Europe worth €175 billion, will continue to fund world-class innovation. 

The funding will be streamlined with simpler processes, faster grants, and lump-sum options, while boosting frontier research and deep tech innovation through strengthened EU research and innovation councils. The new budget is making a difference in this area by also promoting collaboration on societal challenges, aligning partnerships with strategic sectors, more support for research infrastructures, and supporting excellence across regions to improve capacity and reduce brain drain.

Horizon Europe and the Competitiveness Fund will offer support for the entire investment journey of a project (from conception phase to scale-up) and reduce both the cost for potential beneficiaries and the time for disbursement.  

Completing the EU single market

The funding for the reinforced single market and customs programme has been doubled compared to its allocation in the current long-term EU budget. It will benefit citizens and companies by driving the completion of the EU single market. 

It will 

• break down cross-border and cross-country barriers and boost cooperation between national administrations
• ensure stronger consumer protection
• drive standardisation measures, and
• cut red tape in the areas of customs, taxation and anti-fraud.

Connecting Europe Facility

Besides the Competitiveness Fund, we will increase funding of the Connecting Europe Facility for transport and the Connecting Europe Facility for energy. For transport, we are multiplying military mobility by ten, so that our armed forces can move faster, better, and together. And we will multiply energy infrastructure spending by five. This reinforces energy independence and accelerates the clean transition. All of this will help strengthen European defence, European connectivity, and European readiness.