Following the presentation of the Commission’s proposal on Horizon Europe, a consortium of Italy’s organisations has made a plea for maintaining an instrument dedicated to Micro, Small and Medium sized Enterprises in the next EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation.
The promoters’ consortium brings together APRE, the Italian Agency for the Promotion of European Research, and six Italy’s organisations and associations representing micro, small and medium-size enterprises: Confindustria, Confcommercio, Confartigianato, Unioncamere, CNA and Confapi.
While the proposal of the Commission to maintain the future European Innovation Council – EIC on the front-end of breakthrough innovation is welcome, the promoters highlight that innovation with high impact on societies is also enabled by continuous improvement in existing product, services or business models and that the funding schemes should be designed to underpin this broad and balanced concept of innovation, offering support to all innovative businesses.
The SME instrument of Horizon 2020 has successfully provided many European small-and-medium-size companies with the opportunity to develop highly innovative projects, foster business development and nurture the EU innovation ecosystem. Therefore, it should be replicated in Horizon Europe – by maintaining the mono-beneficiary nature and the current structure in different phases – with a substantial budget in line with its ambitious goals.
To know more about the initiative:
Antonio Carbone – carbone(at)apre.it
Mattia Ceracchi – ceracchi(at)apre.it