Europe remains a hub of innovation, science, and industry as it faces tough global competition. The new long-term budget aims to deliver a powerful competitiveness boost for Europe to
- secure supply chains
- scale up innovation
- lead the global race for clean and smart technology.
These investments will help create a stronger industrial base, a more integrated single market, and a united Europe that plays to its strength.
Key figures
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.
What the EU budget delivers today
The Graphene Flagship is one of Europe’s biggest ever research initiatives gathering academic and industrial partners from 18 EU countries. Funded by the Horizon Europe programme, it is unlocking the potential of graphene and other 2D materials, enabling ground-breaking innovations - from Parkinson’s disease treatment to safer flights with de-icing systems, to next-generation batteries and solar panels.
This page was last reviewed on 15 January 2026