Since discussions were first launched in 2016 about focusing on breakthrough innovations, and the first pilot phase of the European Innovation Council (EIC) was launched in 2017, now the most ambitious aspects of the EIC will be tested under the so-called “enhanced pilot”. This phase, due to last over the two remaining years of the Horizon 2020 programme, will test the most ambitious features of the planned reforms to EU innovation support.
Under the first pilot phase of the EIC, the European Commission (EC) had brought in a new bottom-up structure with open calls, and added investor panels and face-to-face interviews to the evaluation process in selecting and supporting Europe’s most innovative start-ups and SMEs. This first phase has been regarded as a success with over 1’200 innovative projects which have benefited from an overall funding of over €730 million.
In this second “enhanced” phase in 2019 and 2020, the full innovation chain will be covered by two funding instruments under the headings of Pathfinder and Accelerator. The two instruments will provide over €2 billion in support to advanced technologies from the earliest development stages to late stage development and even scale-up commercialisation.
The Pathfinder is an evolution of the existing FET open and FET proactive instruments. The EC has launched the first set of EIC pathfinder thematic calls for cutting-edge, high-risk research and innovation projects within slected fields: human-centric artificial intelligence, implantable autonomous devices, zero-emissions energy generation, technologies for social experience, nanometrology, digital twins for life-sciences, and environmental intelligence.
The existing SME instrument will undergo major changes as it evolves into the Accelerator instrument. The SME instrument phase 1, providing small grants for business acceleration services, will be terminated after the final cut-off in September 2019. The SME instrument phase 2, offering mono-beneficiary grants of up to €2.5 million, will now be combined with a novel option of so-called blended financing.
Applicants will be presented with a choice of seeking grant-only support or seeking the grant as well as an equity investment of up to €15 million for commercialistion activities. The blended finance option will be available in a call to be published in June 2019 with a cut-off in October. The European Investment Fund (EIF) will be charged with managing the portfolio of investments in a so-called Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV). The investment guidelines of the SPV are under development and will be published in June along with the first call for proposals.
The EIC enhanced pilot will also introduce new governance structures. The EC will appoint 15 to 20 innovation leaders to an EIC advisory board, with experience developing technologies at universities, as entrepreneurs or as investors in innovative ventures. The board will provide the EC with strategic advice on the new programmes. The EC will also recruit a first set of programme managers with expertise in leading technologies to oversee portfolios of projects in the programmes. The call for expressions of interest in the advisory board has already been announced, and the call regarding the programme managers will be published shortly.
As they test these new ambitious approaches to supporting breakthrough and market-creating innovations, the European institutions are advancing well in their plans to ramp them up to a large scale European Innovation Council under the next framework programme, Horizon Europe, with an indicative budget of €10 billion. These initiatives provide a strong indication of the European ambition to be among the leaders in the next technological revolution.