European Investment Bank to inject €70B in European tech
199 comments
·May 19, 2025owenversteeg
smokel
> If your business does not have university affiliations with people that get existing grants, or connections to EU bureaucracy, then you can forget about getting a dime.
So, then simply get in contact with your local university. It helps the university to get grants when commercial parties are involved, so this is a win-win.
owenversteeg
Hah!
I studied at an excellent Dutch university that's an EU funding darling and had plenty of connections. But because I had "just" a bachelor's degree from a top university, plus substantial relevant experience, nobody would take me seriously. Even with a master's, you will find most people think you are unserious in most "hard" fields. You often need a PhD. And then God help you if you choose to leave the existing ossified structures of academia and industry.
And then you still run up against the issues of risk tolerance (which is zero) and long timelines.
Look, the stated goal of this program is to compete with American venture capital, right? Then look at the founders who got American venture capital money. Look at how many don't even have a bachelor's! Count the number that participated in traditional structures of academia and grant-receiving corporations. Virtually none of those people would have ever gotten a dime of this money, let alone an offer to collaborate from a university.
notahacker
Yeah this, in fact forget local and just write to researchers in your field, or go through dedicated network events. Finding a university researcher with a common interest in your field who'd consider the opportunity to be subsidised for the next 3-4 years working on stuff they're interested in isn't the hardest hurdle deeptech startups will face on their road to commercialization, especially when the alternative people treat like it's some kind of meritocratic sieve is "get warm intros to a VC class so insular some of them write unironic LinkedIn posts about how it's impossible to be successful outside the Bay Area"
ainch
I don't know what price you'd pay in your hypothetical scenario, but I would say that European universities often take a larger chunk of equity than US unis where spinouts are concerned [1]. Most US universities take between 0-5% equity, where EU could go to 10%, and UK unis up to 20-30%.
notahacker
If we're talking about existing EU funding mechanisms, the participating universities take no equity in their startup partners whatsoever, they just get paid part of the funding pot to do a bit of related research and publish it, and might be able to generate a bit of their own IP
josu
Ha! You must have never dealt with European universities.
NooneAtAll3
...so it's corruption with extra steps?
arlort
No, it's the result of the public's/politicians' pathologic risk aversion and swiftness in calling everything corruption
Since it'd be obviously bad (sarcasm) if public money were spent on projects that deliver nothing or the people receiving them used them for anything other than the narrowest interpretation of the goal then you absolutely (sarcasm^2) have to have 50 different layers of checks and plans and assessment to make sure the little money is spent on the entities that lie the best. But at least no opposition politician can complain someone bought a fancier watch than they'd like or didn't deliver enough
Anyway the EIB is a different kind of funding process than EU grants and should be more effective (even just because capital doesn't come out of the EU budget or member states directly), though how much I don't know
ithkuil
It's a weird kind of corruption where the most diligent and patient and boring wins
Zigurd
It's unclear to me if Europe can move any faster than they can boot strap a VC culture. They can only grow a cadre of VC partners through experience. Some American firms have branches in Europe, and there are some European VCs that have decent scale, but I would guess it's 1/4th the size of the US venture business. Maybe less if you factor out investment that doesn't really look like US venture investment. European institutions should step up in the role of limiteds.
The article doesn't give a lot of details, but the ones it does aren't inspiring confidence. A six month decision process is wildly incompatible with startup needs. EIB might be better off being limited partners in existing European VCs.
huqedato
From a person who has dealt with the management of European research projects: these funds will go through the EU bureaucratic maze, don't even think they will be available directly to startups. There will probably be programs and sub-programs, projects and other craps like that to more difficult for people to access the money. It's how the EU works. That's why startups flee to US if they want serious financing.
So leave me be very skeptical about this news.
fock
oh, they are available to startups. Startups having the sole purpose of skimming funds by being the technology partner to some academic.
That's the best case. Then there is outright fraud:
https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101092295 - European dynamic provides some project management and a wordpress-page for the lump sum of 800k€ and of course there is always "SOCIAL OPEN AND INCLUSIVE INNOVATION ASTIKI MI KERDOSKOPIKI ETAIREIA" headquartered here: https://inclusinn.com/. Probably still in stealth mode, using the 4M€ to "promote innovation".
robocat
> Startups having the sole purpose of skimming funds by being the technology partner to some academic.
Is cynicism about motives necessary?
I believe most people have enough self-deception and denial, that we don't need to assume fraud or theft. Similarly charities often end up being self-serving leeches - but the people seem to believe they are helping. Maybe I'm just naive? It is possible that most people in New Zealand are not so focused on intentional theft and fraud?
In New Zealand I've watched our government burn fucktons of money trying to invest in university "innovation". Academics convince politicians that they have valuable ideas, and politicians want to believe universities produce value. However the government funding is horrifically managed (no business sense) and the startups lack the right genetics and fail (even if matched funding from private investors). New Zealanders lack an entrepreneurial learning environment (maybe EU is the same): founding is difficult and really difficult if you've never watched someone close succeed.
I believe the root cause is that academics are not business/financially oriented, so the startups fail because they are not businesses. Plus the organisations picking investments are academic heavy and are not run by good capitalists. Academics often have good valuable ideas. But academics tend not to be hyper-focused just on business outcomes or they are not money focused. Business founders need to focus on profit (not status hunting, and definitely not looking for academic recognition).
I wondered for a while whether the cause was my own selection bias (startups mostly fail so I saw them fail) but I don't think that was the cause.
Also the government investing organisations love heavy handed shitty governance (and legal overcontrol bullshit). The principals believe their advice and overview is valuable. The investors put in bad CEOs and also force the businesses to make poor decisions. I've seen private VC funding make the same mistakes.
It is really sad to see good ideas get murdered by people with government money: I'm sure they believe they are helping and that they are trying to help (I'm not that cynical about motivations).
Our current government has just announced another 100 million to go towards academic startups. I just fucking wish our government would spend the budget instead by removing unnecessary red tape and to improve tax incentives (in New Zealand the incentives to grow businesses or create export income are fucked in my personal experience).
jillesvangurp
Doesn't match my experience. I know of plenty of startups that received EU funding with relatively little hassle. It's not that hard. And if you are afraid of some mild levels of bureaucracy, you shouldn't be running a company. And it's not like the US doesn't have bureaucracy.
RamblingCTO
Both is true: a lot of money is lost to bureaucracy and startups get funding, although it's not that easy imho. And the amounts are laughable in my experience, that's the biggest problem. Yes, it's nice that I get a kickback on research costs or whatever, but the process takes weeks and the returns are dismal. YMMV tho
campl3r
That's not my experience. I have multiple former colleagues who got got EU money for their startup and were able to leave their day job due to that funding. I only supported a bit as a software engineer but what I was involved in it was pretty straightforward.
arlort
A big factor is which country is actually disbursing the funds, the EC doesn't really do so directly
g9yuayon
I often read that EU is incredibly bureaucratic and risk averse. On the other hand, I also read stories how startups can successfully bootstrap themselves via generous support of the government, like tax deduction for small companies, unemployment benefits for founders, low-interest loans, venture investment, free mentorship by very experienced and connected executives, and etc. The stories about French and Denmark companies are especially impressive. So, I was wondering if there's a difference between the governments of individual countries in EU and the EU government.
izacus
Basically like this:
* If the result is good and useful, the credit goes to the member state. * If the result isn't good, it's the fault of the EU.
Similarly how good Champaigne can only come from one place ;)
bjornsing
> On the other hand, I also read stories how startups can successfully bootstrap themselves via generous support of the government, like tax deduction for small companies, unemployment benefits for founders, low-interest loans, venture investment, free mentorship by very experienced and connected executives, and etc.
I’m not seeing EU grants in that list. In general I’d say anything the bureaucrats can’t ruin with their gatekeeping, friendship corruption and overvaluation of social status is a positive. Anything they can ruin they will.
Irishsteve
I know people who've taken money through these routes. The biggest surprise is the paperwork; since it's public money, everything must be fully transparent, and the government needs to justify why funds went to a specific person / entity.
In contrast, private investors have more discretion and fewer stakeholders to answer to.
bgnn
Most of the time the money goes to keep big inefficient European companies European CHIPS act mainly divided the money into smaller sub programs, and gave the money to big companies like ST, Infineon, NXP etc.
For start-ups they do a lot of online calls to ask "what do you need" though. When you say money, they are like, yeah but what do you need except money!?
edf13
And many of these sub-sub-programs cost more to run than they distribute.
nand_gate
Feature, not a bug.
77pt77
Just like NGOs and charity in general.
ty6853
European voter moral imperatives contradict the structure of the countries and special economic zones that foster the greater proportion of startups.
nxpnsv
I applied to a few different programs and got funding for industry research a few different times. It was some work, but still not harder than getting academic research funding...
fear91
Why not finance a more wide tax break for tech companies, including small companies?
I have seen first hand, one of my classmates from high-school, whom I didn't consider to be too bright, receive a 100k EUR grant to build an esports platform that ended up being a styled-up wordpress blog. He had zero interest in tech, never programmed, the works...
He had no interest nor knowledge relating to tech, but managed to somehow get that grant. Meanwhile, I was paying taxes on hard earned freelancing dev money. We were both 23 years old at the time and it was really jarring.
I'd rather they cut taxes for already profitable small companies. The taxes in EU are astronomic.
zipy124
Because investment is often tax-deductible anyway now-days with modern policy trying to encourage this via huge tax-discounts on capex. Therefore tax-breaks on profits just allow existing owners to cash out cheap. The companies that need the help need capital, not tax discounts. Further to this the companies that are profit-generating, still require capital for growth, the small tax on profits isn't enough to make a difference in the scale of things for investment required since corporation tax rates are often so low.
enaaem
Tax breaks is not going to do much, because that is not where the real problem is. Imo EU is being underestimated. The EU is really competitive at boring high tech that bootstrap themselves like cars, civilian air planes and tooling, so the business and innovation climate is not bad.
What's different from the EU and US is that the US has single capital market with more unified regulations where it is much easier to pool infinite VC money into an idea. Contrary to popular belief it's actually the LACK of EU regulations that makes the EU less competitive, because a company has to deal with 20+ regulatory bodies.
In short, the EU should focus on more market integration.
arlort
It's quite simple. The EU can't tell member states how much to tax and even if you cut out all of its budget you'd save maybe a percentage point or two in taxes
On the other hand the EIB (which is anyway not directly controlled in their executive actions by the EU) can grant funds since it's kind of it's role as an investment bank
bjornsing
I could not agree more. But the problem is: then the politicians / bureaucrats don’t get to decide who gets the money.
constantcrying
Can the EU directly regulate the details of the tax regulations of their member states? That would be extremely surprising to me and, even if done, would likely be seen as a sever overreach.
Canada
> Why not finance a more wide tax break for tech companies, including small companies?
Because then these communists wouldn't get to choose who gets the money.
landl0rd
Calviño is the wrong choice to lead this. Why not tap a few people from Mistral if they care about AI? Spotify if they care about more generic tech?
Funding will not fix the fact that euro salaries are not even remotely competitive especially after tax. Maybe it’s better to be poor in europe than America but MLEs at large AI labs and bigtech SWEs are definitively not.
Plus, capital is somehow still more risk-averse in the EU despite the ECB's policy rate consistently running >200bps lower than fed funds. And of course the process of getting funds from the EIB remains agonizing even with this change.
JumpCrisscross
> Calviño is the wrong choice to lead this
Will Calviño be picking and choosing the grantees?
landl0rd
This isn't the point. More knowledgeable people at lower levels can help. But when leadership lacks domain expertise it's very hard to know what to do or not do, what will help and won't. She could be smart and lean heavily on industry experts but that still makes her the wrong choice to lead it when one of them could have done so better.
This is the equivalent of private equity installing someone who knows nothing but MBA material at a biotech company or a ML research company or anything else where domain expertise can actually help.
The EU is actually better at bringing in bits of "technocracy" to let industry experts lend their expertise. I don't know why they are doing that here. I think it's the wrong call.
amarcheschi
Elon Musk lacks domain expertise given how he asked to rewrite Twitter stack to the devs after it was bought
If you're talking about the domain of startups and companies themselves though, I'll give you that
9283409232
You don't see why it might not be a good idea to give leaders in for-profit companies like Mistral or Spotify the keys to billions of dollars in funding?
logicchains
It's a much better idea to give it to people who actually have experience turning financial investment into a valuable technological product than giving it to bureaucrats with no such experience.
StrauXX
It's really tiring to see the same handful of arguments on HN every time anything related to Europe or the EU is posted on here. Yes, some things the USA is doing better than Europe, but far from everything and depending on your political leanings (or rather social position) even most.
zpeti
In this case, it's not hard to make the argument that you can't have one without the other.
If you're always going to lean into risk aversion and safety nets, you will lose to the player who is willing to make more risks. This involves the losers losing bigger, but the winners winning bigger.
That's what the US is compared to Europe. The winners are better off, but the losers are worse off.
Everything is a trade off. But it's highly unlikely you can have best of both worlds in the long run.
hnthrow90348765
The USA doing things better is quickly going to be false
djohnston
Compared to whom?? The EU??? Lmk when they’re building anything competitive.
albumen
In 2019, Airbus displaced Boeing as the largest aerospace company by revenue.
In October 2019, the A320 family became the highest-selling airliner family with 15,193 orders, surpassing the Boeing 737's total of 15,136.
In 2023 the number of Airbus aircraft in service surpassed Boeing for the first time.
ABS
I wonder why US businesses and people import so much stuff from the EU if there isn't anything competitive coming out of it
xethos
Commuter rail, public transit, a social safety net, and I personally would take anything from Volkswagon group over the average Dodge vehicle
9283409232
Spotify is a Swedish company and is the defacto music streaming company, Supercell is one of the largest mobile game companies and is Finnish, Mistral AI is French. There are a lot of European companies that have solid footprints in America.
chermi
[flagged]
miltonlost
How many of the top level comments are just blanket assumptions that this is going to be corrupt without any pointing at specifics of this proposal? The knee-jerk reactions are strong
sowhat25
Because it's their experience with how the EU is run. These top level commenters you refer to don't want to waste their time with the specifics is the proposal because they believe that these initiative is a poorly managed redistribution of tax money.
FirmwareBurner
>How many of the top level comments are just blanket assumptions that this is going to be corrupt without any pointing at specifics of this proposal?
How many points do you need on the graph till you're convinced they form a line?
If some person or some org, has a history of spending money and not delivering anything, what are the odds "this time will be different"?
To me, this initiative is just another point on that line.
newsclues
Seems comparison makes certain regions look good or bad, and that could lead to accountability which would be good or bad depending upon how you benefit or not from the policy.
That’s part of the problem with globalists who want a single world government, one government for the world deprives the people of choice.
bjornsing
These initiatives always end up the same way: bureaucrats distributing taxpayer money to the socially focused careerists at the top of large companies and academic institutions (perhaps after they’ve left and founded a startup). It’s just so engrained in the European way of thinking that you need to ”be someone”, not ”understand something” or ”be able to do something”. It’s sad, but that’s how it is.
zppln
> you need to ”be someone”, not ”understand something” or ”be able to do something”
This very succinctly describes the entire management class here in Sweden... The public sector is run by incompetent people who have to buy consultants to do anything and the private sector is led by the same kind of people to the point where actually competent people avoid going into management. I wonder how long we can keep this up.
carlosjobim
Leave Sweden is the solution for people like you who don't appreciate how things are arranged. You can be much more successful in a more mature economy where there is a better connection between productivity and career opportunities / renumeration.
cess11
The public sector isn't allowed to hire people and do things that could be perceived as competing with the private sector, which drives paying consultancies for things like software development as soon as the result could work as a product (i.e. more than one government body would want an instance).
Procurement ("lagen om offentlig upphandling"), one of the big wins for the right, is also fundamentally broken in that a lot of the public servants involved are fresh graduates that soon gets poached by private corporations and the organisational response is to sign long term contracts with huge corporations that supply many different things and are also allowed to bring in subcontractors for the things they don't. This effectively destroys any possibility of commercial competition.
It's purposefully designed this way by conservatives.
bgnn
Very nicely put! I have been in discussions with these type of people, several times, to start a company in semiconductors and quantum computing. I was often the only one who can "do" things and it was not appreciated. Academics didn't have the time or will to start a company (and had no industry experience), but wanted to have more than 50% of the shares because the government or EU gave the money to them, in return the university wanted 30% cut because they bring "a prestigious name", bug companies forced on you by EU funds did't want shares but they wanted control (board seat) and IP rights. All these were for <500k seed fund which would barely cover couple of engineers salary for a year!
bjornsing
That’s the typical racket, yes. 20 years ago I saw it as an unfortunate consequence of policy mistakes. But now I’m more inclined to see it as the intended purpose of these systems. ”It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.”
null
JumpCrisscross
> These initiatives always end up the same way
By “these” do you mean anything European, or something specific to this structure?
bjornsing
I was primarily referring to EU initiatives. But the national ”innovation system” here in Sweden is pretty much the same. It’s a cultural issue, not an organizational one, IMHO.
bgnn
EU government funds are also similar.
constantcrying
It is not like this is the first time the EU has flushed enormous amounts of money into a non-existing sector. The results, especially when compared to US venture capital are abysmal at producing actual products, especially products which could feasibly rival the US tech sector.
cess11
I don't recognise this description. To me it seems rather easy to just grab some cash off EU or swedish public investment campaigns by having a credible business plan and a project description that fits the campaign.
Research departments at large corporations with the right contacts can get campaigns designed for them, more or less, which I disagree with but it's not like it fits the picture you give.
The EU also does relatively much of "startup" funding through public credit, which is nice, because bad business ideas are killed fast if they can't beg their way into years and years of burning someone else's money, which we due to the private investment sector also had some of until the 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the rate hike.
bjornsing
> Research departments at large corporations with the right contacts can get campaigns designed for them, more or less, which I disagree with but it's not like it fits the picture you give.
Not sure what you mean... It fits perfectly with the picture I’m trying to convey.
donperignon
From my personal experience this funds most of the time end up being absorbed by big corporations that had the contacts and the bureaucratic muscle. So basically it's throwing away 70B euros of citizen taxes.
JumpCrisscross
“The bank aims to process startup financing applications within six months, significantly improving from the current 18-month timespan.”
Oof.
The right way to do this would have been to match private financing so the EIB is providing capital but not gatekeeping. (That or commit to giving the first N companies to reach some milestone a bunch of cheap capital.)
RobRivera
Matching private funding brings the decision making lever to private funders, creating a mechanism to extract tax dollars with minimal government discretion and would be a process ripe for abuse by those with significant capital.
One person's gatekeeping is another person's stewardship and due diligence
tomatocracy
Another model would be for the EIB to commit money to an investment fund and then run a tender process to select a private sector firm to manage the fund. At the individual investment level, give that manager the usual discretion to invest and manage that VC funds have and pay them a market rate with an appropriate fee structure to do it.
You could also insist on the manager raising a certain minimum amount of matching private sector money to "keep them honest".
christkv
In comparison to just giving money today? Just look at the number of failed green projects in the EU where somehow the executives got rich and nothing got built or if built failed to deliver. At least with matching the private sector has to put a eur down for each it receives and the fund would own participations in ventures.
newsclues
Governments would never deploy capital in ways that are stupid, corrupt or gatekeeping.
One person’s stewardship and due diligence is another’s person’s definition of fraud wealth transfer and crime.
exe34
> One person’s stewardship and due diligence is another’s person’s definition of fraud wealth transfer and crime.
Yes, that why you then buy the government and fire everybody who's investigating your many crimes. Much easier that way.
TheOtherHobbes
Nor would VCs, obvs.
How long does it take to get a Series A round, and how many bureaucratic hoops do petitioners have to jump through?
miltonlost
Yay subjectivism means no one is right!!!! Definitions are meaningless!!!
alephnerd
> The right way to do this would have been to match private financing so the EIB is providing capital but not gatekeeping
Israel did this with Yozma back in the 2000s, China recently with Guidance Funds, and the US with he IRA and CHIPS Acts, so it is a model that does work.
That said, the EIB press release is very vague [0], and it appears to be a proposal right now, and still needs to be approved by EIB's Board of Governors.
Realistically, we wouldn't get a true picture of this until mid-late 2025 at the earliest (notorious European summer season is about to kick in), so there's no point speculating about this until the final version that is passed by the Board of Governers
[0] - https://www.eib.org/en/press/news/president-calvino-tech-fir...
ihsw
[dead]
Workaccount2
Europe is going to have a hang-over from resting on it's laurels for the past 20-30 years. I don't know if people will be able to tolerate the changes needed to totally stand independent.
If Europe wants to copy the powerhouse tech industry of the US, it's going to have to become more like the US.
nickserv
You mean the Euro should become the world's reserve currency?
ExoticPearTree
Meaning the EU should stop being so risk adverse, stop having 27 different regulatory bodies for the same thing and the list could go on.
People here talked about Israel: the Shekel is not a currency anybody except them use, but they churn out successful startups at an incredible pace. They use their tech talent very well and are not encumbered by a myriad of regulations.
lyu07282
I don't think becoming even more neoliberal is going to solve anything for the EU, you people know one button so you all you ever want to do is press it harder to solve any problem, it's hilarious.
koonsolo
It's very hard to copy Silicon Valley, even other US regions are not able to do it.
ExoticPearTree
There's something magical about California and New York (another tech powerhouse).
NYC has this vibe of "getting stuff sone, no BS" kind of mindset. California has this relaxed vibe but at the same time the sky is the limit. I think it has something to do with how the sun shines there and the ocean. You feel like just working and things are going to be OK.
I am always more productive in NYC or LA. And I have no real explanation for that.
dustingetz
NYC and SF have private capital concentrated in enormous quantity. Look to the preceding 5 decades to see how that happened, it did not spring up overnight.
jarym
investment is one piece of the puzzle - but you need talent, reasonable cost of living, and a fiscal climate that rewards success instead of sucking any sliver of it with onerous taxes. All those factors of course vary throughout the EU but it would be nice if they took a more holistic approach to supporting tech ventures.
pornel
The US is adopting isolationist policies based on a nationalist ideology. The government is run by anti-intellectuals. The US economic policy is based on xitter rants, and flip-flops every week. The fickle vindictive ruler is personally attacking businesses that don't make him look good. It's clear that in the US the path to success is now loyalty. The president runs a memecoin.
The EU is getting ready to brain-drain the US.
ExoticPearTree
> The EU is getting ready to brain-drain the US.
It is not going to happen, this is just day-dreaming. Yes, I saw the news, but you can't compare a few tens of people wanting to leave the US for ideological reasons to millions of people that stay in the US because they can fare better and make more money or start new companies overnight because they have a great idea.
underdown
I make 4x in the US what I’d make in Germany.
JumpCrisscross
> All those factors of course vary throughout the EU but it would be nice if they took a more holistic approach to supporting tech ventures
All of those things can be bought. One of Europe’s strategic disadvantages vis-à-vis America and China is low availability of big, risk-taking cheque writers. Fixing that today is worth more than a working group to write a paper about a holistic solution in ten years.
null
ayushrodrigues
I was happy to read this as a founder who was raised in the UK. I wish I didn't have to move to the US to start a company but it's starting to feel like a joke here.
> The bank aims to process startup financing applications within six months
No good founder is waiting for 6 months. It makes absolutely no sense when VCs can make decisions in days, hours even.
cheeseface
Most startups will use funds like in addition to VC funding. It allows you to increase your runway so you’re better positioned for your next funding round.
ayushrodrigues
Seems plausible but my experience with EU bureaucracy doesn't give me a lot of hope that this is worthwhile for startups
Ylpertnodi
Which EU bureaucracy, or all of them?
alephnerd
> I was happy to read this as a founder who was raised in the UK
The UK isn't a member of the EIB.
> No good founder is waiting for 6 months. It makes absolutely no sense when VCs can make decisions in days, hours even.
Speculation, but based on similar initiatives done in the EU in the past, it will target industrial and manufacturing vendors and suppliers (especially as this proposal is linked to KfW).
That said, no point discussing this until the final proposal actually gets presented and voted on by the Board of Governors. Most of what exists publicly is just vague press releases.
ayushrodrigues
True, but the EU startup ecosystem is small and shared. Only so many places to raise capital from.
alephnerd
Yep! But the overlap between the UK and EU ecosystem would be dwarfed by the overlap of the US-UK ecosystem.
So long as the EU doesn't have their own equivalent of Index Ventures, I'm not sure an EIB style industrial policy program would have significant impact on the British startup scene.
There is a lot of discussion here trashing EU programs for startups and not a lot of specific details, which is disappointing. I will try to provide a more substantive critique.
My personal experience, having been involved with many startups in both the EU and US, is that EU government funding is completely useless for almost all startups. Why? First of all, you have to be part of the existing networks. If your business does not have university affiliations with people that get existing grants, or connections to EU bureaucracy, then you can forget about getting a dime. Then there is the risk aspect: if you are doing anything even remotely novel, or with any amount of risk, forget about it. This is not just my opinion, Mario Draghi, previous president of the ECB and Italian PM, said that the EU does not take enough risk to produce real innovation. And finally there's the timelines: from researching funding to cash in your bank account is always measured in years.
So, my expectation is that these funds will be distributed to members of the bureaucratic class and their network, for low-risk, low-reward projects, on a timescale too slow for most startups. I hope to be proven wrong, but the results of previous decades of EU funding programs do not make me optimistic.