Europe needs new tools for competitiveness and technological sovereignty to boost R&I results uptake, enhance the Single Market, and help companies to grow. Technology infrastructures have a crucial role in this.
On 14th February 2025, the European Commission published the final report ‘Towards a European policy for technology infrastructures - Building bridges to competitiveness’ of the independent expert group, which included 22 members from Member States, Innovation agencies, TI hosts, Research infrastructures (RIs), Industry, SMEs, and the finance sector. VTT was privileged to be one of the selected research and technology organisations (RTO) in this expert group.
The final report shows that TIs play a crucial role in driving innovation, competitiveness and technological sovereignty in Europe. The journey has been fascinating, and the outcomes are elevating. We are close to a turning point: Now it’s time to deploy these findings and recognise TIs as EU level assets to boost growth and enhance the competitiveness of Europe!
During an intensive year we were exploring TIs from various angles. These cover TIs’ relationship to other infrastructures, their role in the ecosystem, and challenges they face. The ambitious work plan started with renewing the definition of TIs and defining criteria for strategic pilot areas to test the European approach to them.
The expert group’s recommendations and lessons learned are ready for review. Our key take aways rely on the topics of the recommendations of the expert group:
- Renewed TI Definition: emphasizes needs for applied research services and helps to better understand the purpose of TIs, their users, scope of services and typical host organisations. It acknowledges that TIs are also used by researchers, not just by industrial users. One key learning is that technologies are not market-ready when they come out of TIs. Therefore, the definition rightly focuses on testing, technology development and upscaling and providing services from pre-competitive applied research, demonstration and validation of technology up to small-scale production. TIs can be public, semi-public or privately owned physical or digital environments, which are open to public and private users. Recognition means integration of the definition to European and national legal acts and policy documents, (e.g. future ERA Act and the FP10 Regulation) strategies and funding programmes.
- R&D&I Infrastructure Dimensions: a table of the 7 main dimensions of R&D&I infrastructures is one of the concrete outcomes and sets RIs, TIs, and Industrial Infrastructures (IIs) as the core of the infrastructure ecosystem. It illustrates the interfaces of infrastructures, showing their commonalities and distinctive characteristics. This perspective helps to shape the future landscape of infrastructures when new programmes, policies and funding instruments are designed to support the creation of new infrastructures and improve or upgrade existing ones. TIs can be used to demonstrate the value of new technologies and business cases for investors and the banking sector. This is about derisking of investments as the next steps after TIs require validation in industrial infrastructures (IIs), in real industrial environments and production processes, to create actual business and sales in the market.
- Overcoming Fragmentation: The current challenge in Europe is the fragmentation and scattered efforts to finance and support TIs at EU, national, and regional levels. More strategic approach is needed at EU level. This means dedicated funding for TIs, pooling of public and private funding sources and setting up programmes which can truly combine EU, national and regional financing and private investments to test the European approach to TIs. An important learning was that the uncertainties related to State Aid Rules in the context of TIs (GBER and State Aid Framework for RDI), can hinder the development of public funding programmes. Therefore, it is important to improve the clarity and legal certainty around the State Aid rules applicable to TIs and increase awareness among national authorities and stakeholders.
- Prioritization Mechanism: A governance structure for TIs is needed, as such mechanisms are rare at both the EU and national levels. They should be aligned with industrial needs and EU policy priorities and should focus on strategic relevance, feasibility, impact, industrial ecosystem development, gaps in services and facilities, and financial viability. We believe that this is the key to enhance the interconnections and synergies of infrastructure collaboration, which lead to more integrated and efficient innovation ecosystems across the continent. Examples of 18 potential pilot actions gathered by the expert group on TIs would be a perfect way to test the criteria for strategic pilots and European approach to TIs.
We fully support the 5 strategic recommendations of the final report and their feeding to the preparation of a new European Strategy for Research and Technology Infrastructures, which is under cooking in the kettles of the Commission. Good things take time, but it is justified to say that today TIs provide real value for European companies.
The expert group had access to new TI materials
Since February 2024, the Commission Expert Group on Technology Infrastructures (TIs) has been working on this topic. Users’ experiences and views were gathered in two workshops: ‘Access conditions to Technology Infrastructures’ organised by the European Commission and the Belgian Presidency of the Council in February 2024 and ‘Enhancing SME access to Research and Technology Infrastructures’ organised by INESC TEC and the RITIFI project in June 2024. Insights were absorbed from the report ‘Policy landscape supporting Technology Infrastructures in Europe’ by Technopolis, covering analyses of policy initiatives and programmes in 27 Member States and with five benchmarks from third countries (US, Japan, Canada, UK and Switzerland).
A public survey launched for users gathered over 320 answers from individual enterprises about their needs for future technology development and TIs (‘User needs for technology infrastructures - Analytical report’). It should be noted that 88% of respondents are targeting markets outside of their national borders and from a regional EU market to the global market.
VTT’s representatives in the Expert Group: Tiina Nakari-Setälä (Vice President Industrial Biotechnology and Food) supported by Mirka Gottberg (Manager, International Affairs, Policy and Strategy), who worked as a Seconded National Expert at the European Commission between 2021-2023 with TI policy as her main task.
