The Currency | 06/06/2025 | Ireland - European Innovation Council board member Bart Becks talks about the sandboxes, unified incorporation regime and new funding options in the EU’s latest strategy for start-ups and scale-ups as lawmakers obsess over competitiveness.

Tech Funding News | 05/06/2025 - Barocal has secured over £3.8 million in funding, including an equity round led by Kiko Ventures (the cleantech investment arm of IP Group plc), with support from Cambridge Enterprise, Breakthrough Energy, and the European Innovation Council, and previous investors include Parkwalk Advisors.

EU Start-ups | 05/06/2025 - EU programmes are not only bridging early-stage gaps, they’re also aligned with broader geopolitical and industrial priorities. As Stéphane Ouaki, Head of Department at the European Innovation Council (EIC), puts it in the report: “The EIC helps startups and SMEs to develop and scale up their breakthrough innovations, strengthening Europe’s technological sovereignty and industrial competitiveness.” His message underscores the EU’s strategic intent: this is not just innovation for its own sake, but part of a broader effort to reinforce Europe’s position in critical areas of competitiveness through targeted public investment.

This call aims at developing new cross-sectoral and cross-border industrial value-chains integrating technologies and know-how from aerospace and ICT communities to 4 key Blue Growth domains: Smart Port, Smart Ship, Smart Shipyard and Maritime Surveillance.

MarTERA has launched a fourth joint call for transnational research and innovation projects. This call is initiated by ministries/funding organisations from 9 countries: Belarus, Belgium, Germany, Malta, Norway, Poland, Romania, South Africa and Turkey. The total funding budget is EUR 8.5 million.

The general objective of this Call is to boost the uptake of digitalisation and innovation by tourism SMEs through transnational cooperation and capacity building.

We are happy to announce the second session of the "Patent protection for EU funding beneficiaries" lecture series organised in co-operation with the European Patent Office (EPO). Each lecture explores the interface between patents and the respective technical field. This session focusses specifically on Artificial Intelligence in MedTech and introduces the main aspects of intellectual property (IP) management: notably IP ownership, protection and exploitation. Please note that by registering for one session, participants automatically register for all sessions within the series.

From proposal stage to project implementation and successful exploitation, intellectual property (IP) plays a pivotal role throughout the lifecycle of an EU-funded project. This webinar offers a comprehensive overview of IP creation and management during and beyond the duration of a Horizon project.

From proposal stage to project implementation and successful exploitation, intellectual property (IP) plays a pivotal role throughout the lifecycle of an EU-funded project. This webinar offers a comprehensive overview of IP creation and management during and beyond the duration of a Horizon project.

Five exceptional innovations that can make a big difference in the lives of the most vulnerable people around the world have won the EIC Horizon Prize on Affordable High-Tech for Humanitarian Aid. Meet the winners!

The city of Leuven has risen to the top for its excellent innovation concepts and bringing together stakeholders and citizens with the common purpose of innovating around complex challenges.

This year’s winners of the Women Innovators Prize are women who are pioneering game-changing innovations across a wide range of industries and helping to combat global challenges.

DigiCirc is looking for European SMEs/Start-ups that can use digital tools and apply cutting-edge solutions in the circular economy by addressing specific challenges in the domain of Blue Economy.

The Fund was presented during the session “Europe's new ‘Super Fund': the EIC Fund”, which gathered Commissioner Gabriel and five experts from the EIC Fund Board of Directors and Investment Committee, as well as from the EIB as advisor to the Fund. The Fund represents a great opportunity for private investors to invest alongside the Fund in highly innovative companies.

The EIC Accelerator is part of the European Innovation Council (EIC) pilot that supports top-class innovators, entrepreneurs, small companies and scientists with funding opportunities and acceleration services. Do not miss this year's final cut-off on 7 October!

In the occasion of the World IP Day 2023, we recently spoke with Catherine Heng Yee Huynh, a bi-cultural and enthusiastic Intellectual Property Law and Data Privacy lawyer based in Paris, France. She is the founding partner of the law firm CATHERINE HENG YEE HUYNH and has expertise in the protection of creations, especially in France, mainland China and Hong Kong. Catherine shared with us the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs in the IP domain, including the fact that women are still underrepresented in the field.

In an interview with top economic French newspaper 'Les Echos', EC vice-president Margrethe Vestager mentions the EIC as a possible model for the implementation of the European Sovereignty Fund.

We discussed with Mathilde Kraft, project coordinator of West MOPoCo and French National Coordinator of the WestMED Initiative, on the main results, lessons learnt and follow-up activities planned.

Climate change is happening all around us. Polar ice shields are melting, and sea levels are rising. Extreme weather events like flooding, heatwaves and droughts are escalating. And, things look set to get worse in the coming decades. We present five LIFE projects that are working hard to alleviate the situation.

Bats are vital for biodiversity, they eat lots of insects, helping to reduce the numbers of mosquitoes, grasshoppers and other pests on farms. These seven LIFE projects are playing an important role in ensuring that this long-misunderstood species thrives well into the future.

The latest deliverable of H2020 PERICLES project is providing evidence and insisting on the importance of participatory and deliberative approaches for integration and coordination of Cultural heritage policies within ICZM and MSP. Discover this project ressources and reports on the MSP-platform "practices" section.

Licensing has a key role for many EIC beneficiaries, serving as a vital mechanism facilitating technology transfer, accelerating market entry, and enabling revenue generation. The Innovation Radar analysis revealed that 37 percent of EIC-supported innovations required or would benefit from licensing. Licensing is portrayed as a robust business strategy providing access to technology and intellectual property, highlighting various models like development partnerships, freedom to operate agreements, and horizontal as well as vertical commercial licensing strategies.

Voluntary copyright registration is useful in China especially when starting enforcement proceedings in case of an infringement because authorities would require you to show copyright certificate as proof of your rights before taking up your case. In this article, the China IP SME Helpdesk external expert Dr Jian Xu explains how to register copyright in China.

In November 2023, the China’s Supreme People's Court amended the Jurisdiction Rules of the IP Tribunal, limiting the scope of the cases handled by the special IP Tribunals so that the IP Tribunals will focus on ‘significant and complicated’ cases. Read the China IP SME Helpdesk external expert Dr Leslie Xu’s analysis to learn what this means in practice for the right holders. The article was first published on the website of Chang Tsi & Partners.

Following the publication of the Communicating MSP guide, the EU MSP platform will organise an online workshop dedicated to the communication needs and priorities of MSP stakeholders. Take part to this preliminary survey to help us design this event and select the key topics you would like to discuss with MSP experts. To take part to the short survey click "more"

Targeted consultation on International Ocean Governance is launched! The consultation aims at assessing development needs and options for the Agenda in light of today’s challenges and opportunities to deliver ocean-related targets of Agenda 2030 and in particular the Sustainable Development Goal on Conservation and sustainable use of the oceans (SDG14) in support of the European Green Deal.

Would you like to give your opinion about the re-use of plastic waste? FiberEUse, a Horizon 2020-funded project, has recently launched the "FiberEUse Idea Manager" platform. The users can provide feedback on the design of solutions elaborated within the project, also grading different alternatives. The highest rated ideas will be manufactured as prototypes and showcased at the 2020 Milan Design week.