Today, the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) celebrates its first year in action for the development and manufacturing of critical technologies in Europe. Over the past year, STEP has pooled the investment firepower of 11 EU programmes, mobilising over €15 billion to support Europe's competitiveness in three strategic sectors: digital technologies and deep-tech innovation, clean and resource-efficient technologies, and biotechnologies.
So far, €9.1 billion of EU funds have been mobilised towards STEP across five programmes managed by the Commission directly, namely the Digital Europe programme, the European Defence Fund, the EU4Health programme, Horizon Europe, and the Innovation Fund. Additional €6.1 billion of EU funds are being mobilised towards STEP thanks to reprogramming of cohesion policy funds by 11 pioneer EU Member States.
The Commission's STEP Taskforce works, hand in hand, with the 27 EU Member States. The STEP Taskforce regularly engages with project promoters, managing authorities and relevant associations to improve the set-up and understand their investment needs. Extensive outreach and a dedicated survey answered by some 500 research and industry organisations confirmed the strong demand for simplification of access to EU funding.
Building on the success of STEP, President von der Leyen suggested, in her letter to EU Leaders ahead of the special European Council on 6 March, that STEP could be further leveraged by enlarging its scope to all technologies relevant for the defence sector.
Improved and streamlined access to funding opportunities
The STEP Portal provides a one-stop, user-centric platform for project promoters to access all STEP funding opportunities across EU programmes and Member States. About 60 calls for proposals at EU and national levels have been published so far and about 40 of them remain open for submission.
Promoting high-potential EU projects for better access to funding
The STEP Portal currently showcases the first 142 high potential projects that have been awarded the STEP Seal by the Commission. The project promoters are informed about funding opportunities as well as advisory services while their projects are made visible to private and public investors, including implementing partners like the European Investment Bank (EIB) Group or National Promotional Banks.
Some prominent examples of STEP Seals awarded by the Commission in 23 Member States by the Commission include:
- Digital tech: OpenEuroLLM will bring together EU startups, research labs and supercomputing hosting entities from all over the EU to train the first-ever family of open-source Large Language Models for artificial intelligence covering all official and future EU languages.
- Clean tech: Energy Observer 2 in France and the Netherlands will be the world's first hydrogen-powered cargo ship, featuring advanced cryogenic tanks for the storage of hydrogen and fuel cell technology to cut maritime freight emissions by 98%.
- Bio tech: PHARMSD 3.0 of Portugal aims at setting a new standard for continuous pharmaceutical manufacturing with the optimisation of spray drying, a method that turns liquid drug formulations into stable powders.
STEP seeks to leverage and de-risk private investment for EU high-potential projects. The STEP Taskforce is reaching out to private investors to promote STEP Seals projects, increasing their visibility and identifying investments paths.
Next steps in 2025
STEP's positive momentum is expected to strengthen in 2025 with the support of Member States for the success of innovative projects and the reduction of dependencies in strategic technologies. Member States are encouraged to leverage STEP opportunities under NextGenerationEU/ Recovery and Resilience Fund. They can reallocate resources to STEP-labeled projects and transfer up to 6% of their RRF envelope to their national compartment in InvestEU to fund these projects.
Background
STEP was established by the EU Regulation in March 2024, as part of the mid-term review of the MFF.
As part of the work on the interim evaluation of STEP, the Commission will gather evidence and feedback through a call for evidence that will be launched on Have your Say in the coming days and will stay open for contributions for four weeks.
STEP will be promoted at several events in the coming months. To stay updated, you can subscribe to the STEP Newsletter and check the press and media section of the STEP Portal.
