Lack of capital to invest in startups, associations demand concrete results from EU

Brussels – Creating an enabling environment for investment in innovation, using the EU budget strategically, and fostering contact between investors, companies, and European institutions in an increasingly competitive international environment. These and other challenges were at the centre of the “EU Venture Capital Outlook: Investment & Innovation for the Future” initiative, held this morning (April 29) at the European Parliament.

The event, organized by Italian Tech Alliance, the Italian venture capital association, together with other industry associations from major European countries (France Digitale from France, Startup Verband from Germany, and Adigital from Spain), delved into the issue of investments in innovation and startups, which are crucial for the relaunch of European digital, which, as the Draghi report has already pointed out, suffers heavily from competition with the United States and China. Although Europe still leads the way, compared to the rest of the world, in high-risk investments (important for the development of hi-tech companies), the gap with the U.S. market remains significant, while the level of investment itself in 2024 was the lowest since 2020.

The situation could nevertheless improve if appropriate measures were to be taken in the short term: as the report carried out by Growth Capital notes, the number of rounds in the EU remained stable in the first quarter of 2025, accompanied by a good start in terms of the amount invested (17 billion), in line with the last four quarters, with almost half of the capital invested in Europe attributable to rounds above €100 million. This means that the ecosystem of direct investments in competitive startups is stabilising, which can be an attraction factor for investors, especially in strategic sectors of artificial intelligence and defense technologies, which are already experiencing very strong growth.

“The European Union can and must believe more in its ability to be a global player,” said Francesco Cerruti, managing director of the Italian Tech Alliance, commenting on the report, “2025 can be a year of results. We are working toward the launch of the 28th regime, valid throughout the European Union, and achieving greater European strategic independence in hardware, cloud services, and applications. It is necessary that after the 2024 fine declarations of intent, we move to action.” Tomas Vaclavicek also spoke at the meeting. A member of the Task Force on Startups and Scaleups at the European Commission, he stressed the importance of attracting capital from national investment funds and simplifying regulations on investment in innovation, which limit the inflow of capital to the Old Continent. The shortage of capital for developing competitive sectors is a serious problem in the EU. It cannot be solved by the EU budget, as stressed by Caroline Vandierendonck, head of the EU Commission’s Task Force on the Budget: “The spending chapter dedicated to innovation for the next few years is only 8 per cent of the total budget, we would like to do more but our resources are limited; we need a strong capital market to achieve important results.”