The future European Competitiveness Fund is an ambitious instrument to strengthen European innovation and competitiveness, but it risks leaving SMEs and territories on the margins. To be truly effective, it will need to provide more accessible tools, capable of recognising and supporting the widespread innovation that takes place across production chains.
There is something deeply European in the Commission’s proposal for the future European Competitiveness Fund, currently under consideration by the European Parliament. The ambition is high, and the diagnosis is correct. Yet the risk is that the initiative stops one step short of the decisive point.
The analysis is widely shared: Europe must grow, innovate, compete, turn scientific excellence into industrial capacity, and strengthen strategic value chains. But in the transition from vision to architecture, something is lost: the broader productive fabric.
The future ECF is a top down tool, conceived for major actors and large-scale projects. It is necessary, but not sufficient. European competitiveness is also built within value chains and by the thousands of businesses that innovate every day. This ecosystem remains on the margins.
SMEs are mentioned, but not truly integrated. Dedicated instruments, simplified access and corrective measures are still missing in a system that structurally favours those already equipped to navigate it. This is not only a question of fairness: it is a question of effectiveness. Without mobilising this wider base, the fund will remain limited in scope.
The issue is one of perspective: it is not enough to fund innovation; we must understand how it spreads. Innovation spreads through adoption and integration along value chains, through incremental changes that are often invisible, but crucial for productivity.
The strengthening of governance, too, risks translating into greater complexity. For many businesses, the obstacle is not the absence of opportunities, but the difficulty of accessing them. Without simplification, fragmentation simply becomes integrated complexity.
Finally, a system based on scale and excellence tends to concentrate resources in territories that are already strong, widening existing gaps. This is a contradiction for a Union founded on cohesion.
The point is not to lower the level of ambition, but to make it concrete: placing businesses at the centre, building accessible instruments, and recognising widespread innovation. Without a broad base, competitiveness remains a promise.
Michl Ebner
Vice-President of Eurochambres
Head of the Unioncamere Delegation to Eurochambres
President of the Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Crafts, Tourism and Agriculture of Bolzano