This week saw a succession of agreements reached in inter-institutional negotiations (‘trilogues’): in the early hours of Wednesday 7 February, negotiators from the European Parliament and the EU Council reached agreement on the ‘STEP’ regulation, which introduces the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform. It will encourage investment in certain technologies to make the EU more competitive in strategic sectors. The text is indirectly linked to that on the Net-Zero Industry Act (NZIA), which was the subject of a provisional agreement on Tuesday 6 February (see EUROPE 13344/4).
The crucial question of the budget allocated to ‘STEP’ was already settled with the agreement on the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) (see EUROPE 13341/1): it will have access to €1.5 billion in new money, via the ‘European Defence Fund’. STEP will also be able to rely on the redeployment of funds from other programmes, such as the Cohesion Fund, InvestEU, Horizon Europe, the European Innovation Fund and the Recovery and Resilience Facility.
The European Commission initially proposed injecting €10 billion of new money into STEP, but the European Parliament subsequently called for €13 billion.
“We regret the significant cuts made by the EU Council, in particular to Horizon Europe, where the Member States are not keeping their promises to provide sufficient funding for innovation and investment”, said Christian Ehler (EPP, German), co-rapporteur of the text for the European Parliament.
An initial assessment of ‘STEP’ should be carried out by the end of 2025 to feed into discussions on the post-2027 MFF. MEPs are still hoping that a European Sovereignty Fund can be included in the next EU budget.
Use of funds. The creation of ‘STEPs’ will make it easier for Member States to redirect certain European funding towards strategic industrial projects, notably via the Cohesion Fund.
More advantageous rules may apply in terms of co-financing or investment for these projects. For example, they will be able to benefit from a cofinancing rate of 100% over the period 2021-2027, i.e. no recourse to non-European funding.
Member States will be able to amend existing funding programmes by fast-track procedure so that projects can benefit from pre-financing as early as this year.
Scope. While ‘STEP’ stems from the need to find funds for the NZIA, their scope has not been fully aligned, as the European Parliament had demanded. The STEP platform aims to support projects in digital technologies, clean and resource-efficient technologies and biotechnologies. The European Parliament supported a terminology aligned with that of the NZIA and therefore wanted to talk about ‘net zero emission’ technologies, in addition to biotechnologies.
Sovereignty seal. The ‘sovereignty seal’ will be awarded to projects that contribute to the objectives of the regulation and will serve as a quality label. The aim is to attract more investors, but also to facilitate access to certain European funding sources.
The European Commission will also set up a ‘sovereignty portal’ to facilitate the process. It will publish the various financing opportunities.
Most of the European Parliament’s political groups welcomed the agreement as a step forward for European industry, although they regretted the small amount of money tabled.
MEPs hope to be able to vote on the provisional agreement at the plenary session from 26 to 29 February, provided that the Member States have also approved the text. (Original version in French by Léa Marchal)