Signatories

Green Transition

Current climate policy efforts are insufficient to keep the earth’s average temperature rise below 2 Celsius, let alone 1.5. Resilient adaptation to global warming may well be insufficient and we need to consider cooling the earth by way of climate engineering. The technologies for this are not ready for deployment and deeper scientific insights are required. Moreover, a governance structure is needed taking into account ethical aspects of climate engineering. Deployment of climate engineering technologies will bring about impacts that go across national borders so an international approach is required. The United States has taken an initiative via DARPA. The European Union has not done so as yet. This may result in lagging behind in understanding, despite the high probability that climate engineering may be of geo-political strategic interest to the European Union.

Europe’s Deep Tech Opportunity

In synthetic cell research scientists seek to understand how cells, and more broadly life, work by trying to replicate the cell molecular mechanisms. Thanks to ERC funding and national initiatives, European scientists are world leaders in this field. Building synthetic cells also promises revolutionary new technologies that will boost the green economy and strengthen Europe’s sovereignty in Deep Tech. Technological applications will cover areas such as producing sustainable chemicals, making materials that are 100% reusable or capable of self-repair, and harnessing CO2 as plants do. Research is progressing rapidly worldwide; the United States and China, in particular, are investing heavily in this field. If Europe were to rely on synthetic biology technologies from beyond its borders, this could lead to both potential dependence and economic loss. European scientists working on synthetic cells need to join forces to upscale research, in collaboration with companies, in one coordinated European Innovation Ecosystem and boost technology development in Europe. Financial support from the European Commission is essential to realize this ecosystem, and to ensure Europe’s leadership in world-class, socially responsible and environmentallysustainable technologies.

Fostering Innovation Cohesion

The initiatives of Knowledge4Innovation are constantly evolving. More impact is needed from the EU research programs in the real economy. From “Invented in Europe” we must turn the excellent research results into “Made in Europe”.
Commissioner Mariya Gabriel gives this boost to initiatives from networks of Universities, Knowledge institutions and entrepreneurs all over Europe. The regions and cities must take a stronger enabling position than ever before.
Since 2008 K4I advocated for a better coordination among the EU instruments. From fragmentation to integration. We supported the Smart Specialization Strategies, an obligation for all member states to make combined EU investments a reality. Now we can create more impact from synergies between Horizon Europe and Cohesion Funds.
We see a growing interest all over the world in our results. The Organisation of American States (OAS), where I am in function now, shows direct interest in our governance and Smart Specialization and we should strengthen cooperation with third countries. The green and digital transitions show the need for more transatlantic cooperation. Let’s join forces!

Green Transition

Minerals, metals and advanced materials are key enablers to achieve the objectives of the European Green Deal. Today, only a fraction of the most relevant raw materials is produced in Europe. This can be changed through a circular economy approach, through innovation in recycling, substitution, processing, mining, and exploration. Europe needs to secure a sustainable raw materials supply by driving innovation, education, and deep tech talents across European industrial ecosystems.
Europe should develop a European raw materials skills and capacity-building initiative. Allocate substantial funding to scale up the European Raw Material Academy to develop the modules necessary to attract the needed human capital for industry and to provide the ever-changing needs of this green industrial revolution.
Europe needs to increase investment in the primary and secondary raw materials sector and ensure a robust R&D and innovation ecosystem. We must strengthen Europe's global leadership in science and research to accelerate innovation output particularly via public-private open innovation ecosystems. In this context Europe should allocate additional funding in competitive grants to boost EU R&D and innovation capacity and establish IPCEIs for critical and strategic raw materials value chains constrained by market failures, setting up the ground for a future European Partnership in the raw and advanced materials field.

Tech Sovereignty

Create a tax incentive/ reduction of taxes to private organizations which are buying innovative solutions from the European area via the "Innovation procurement process" and "partnership of innovation procurement" where the private organizations have public consultations of innovative solutions for their needs, and they modified and adapt their procurement processes to be able to purchase products, services and solutions from startups and SMEs in Europe.

Green Transition

Take forward more actions for greening and smarting software. Produce more simulators for evaluating
impact of actions/design before implementation. Combine the Knowledge-based AI with connectionist
AI. Apply the software invented in Europe in constraint programming for optimizing, scheduling and planning
actions. Pursue data sliming as an alternative to big data, and invest in an increase in Knowledge Scientists
and circular energy. Stop programmed obsolescence and find alternatives to adds-based business models.

Regulating Emerging Technologies

Artificial Intelligence: an engine for many innovations
There are many societal, economic and strategic challenges for Europe but there are very few technologies that will play a key role in each and every one of them. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the most far reaching technology that has this characteristic and is creating a transformation of society. It provides tremendous opportunities as well as some risks that need to be managed.
The Netherlands AI Coalition (NL AIC) is a public private collaboration of close to 500 parties and over 2000 people from science and education, government, business large, small and startup and representatives of society, with the goal to stimulate development and application of human centric AI, in line with European values. While Europe is rather late in adopting AI and very much aware of the unwanted effects of AI that we see developing outside Europe, this should not lead to complacency and risk-avoiding behaviour. Only by a proactive innovation approach and a strong European innovation policy, we can take the steering wheel and not only create welfare and well-being for European citizens, but also decide what norms and values we want to apply to innovation. Innovation means leading, not following. Innovation is not just technology, but also innovating in ethical and legal frameworks e.g. using regulatory sandboxes involving all key stakeholders in the design phase. This can facilitate a fast transition to higher TRL and societal acceptance based on jointly developed norms, which is stronger than just legislation.
AI is not a goal in itself but can provide breakthrough solutions for the energy transition, climate challenges and the Green Deal. But also for traffic and transportation. For healthcare efficiency, cost and outcome. For food and agri. For security. And many other domains.
A strong and proactive innovation policy of the EU will stimulate member states collaborating in these areas, creating critical mass to make global impact. NL AIC supports such strong innovation policy.

From Education to Entrepreneurship

• Address the fragmented European higher education system, align policies and to overcome this situation
• Support initiatives that outline the positive social role of innovation and lift up the role of the entrepreneurial approach as the key element to drive innovation
• Improve scientific training curricula that will put greater emphasis on entrepreneurial and innovation management components; stimulate common cross-regional and cross-country initiatives in this respect
• Reward of the use of such skill set and define pan-European guidelines to this aim
• Further simplify/promote the exploitation of scientific results in coherence with other European, national and regional initiatives
• Emphasize the social role and status of science graduates so that they can utilize their own skillset to solve a particular problem through an innovation process
• Permanent honest analysis of the development of entrepreneurship and implementation of the related above policies across the EU

Fostering Innovation Cohesion

Better align EU industrial strategy with regional development and/or national development at the level of the Member States. Create clusters of regional innovation that encompass similar critical mass in terms of market, market access, financial, industrial and human resources perspectives; achieve harmonisation among clusters regarding outcomes, comparability, competitive level.

Regulating Emerging Technologies

• Create a road map/rules of procedure for regulation applicable to emerging technologies; this would refer to establishing critical thresholds in terms of agreed social indicators that would align to different levels of regulation to be activated depending on the level of development of the technology concerned and the level of impact expected from the technology
• Accordingly create a structure of regulations, that differ in level and area of applicability
• Permanently monitor on a socio-economic (and not political) base impacts of emerging technologies and develop guidelines of action on EU and regional/MS level

Green Transition

As the EU aspires to lead climate mitigation in the face of global warming, it is critical that action be informed by reliable and accurate data and services powered by that data. Thanks to unprecedented technological innovations, Earth Observation now allows decision-makers to identify risks, tailor policy response and resource allocation, monitor progress and identify trends. Among them, satellite imagery continues to provide a unique understanding of the Earth, by leaving no feature of the planet unseen. With the threat of climate change continuing to endanger the livelihood of human beings and the biosphere, the European Commission must continue to encourage the use of space technologies and facilitate data access and distribution across sectors if it is to achieve the European Green Deal and protect the planet. This goal will be achieved through a "Forum of exchange for decision making on the Green transition supported by EO data and services". (i.e., EARSC Green Deal w/g)

From Education to Entrepreneurship

The lack of specialized technical and scientific skills, knowledge, and competences hinders the uptake by stakeholders to use information that could support the Green Deal agenda. Map the skills needed for the Green transition using digital information obtained by satellite-derived data and services is essential. To build a discussion on skills, a Trends Observatory is needed to identify and keep the stakeholders informed about emerging trends and innovative approaches affecting the sector, its growth at the European but also international level and its uptake related to other sectors. This goal will be achieved through a Forum of exchange on skills for decision making on the Green transition supported by EO data and services. (i.e., EO4GEO Alliance)

From Education to Entrepreneurship

Each year, thousands of researchers finish their PhD project. Among them, there are some bright ideas which can be converted into business. By providing proper education on entrepreneurship, this challenge could be tackled. My proposal is to include entrepreneurship education as part of graduate level course in Europe.

Tech Sovereignty

Our startup is engaged in R&D of robotics. In fact, we are faced with that most of the critical elements are produced in China. Simple enough, but critical. First, logistics greatly inhibits the R&D process. Secondly, there is a situation when all our long-term work directly depends on the political vector, and tomorrow we may find ourselves without the necessary components at all. We propose to select the most vulnerable groups and to stimulate at least the R&D and small-scale local production. These components include (in the field of robotization): microcontrollers, control boards, AGV wheel motors, encoders, actuators, etc. We have already taken the first step on this path and have patented our own version of a AGV wheel utility model. Which can be 2-3 times cheaper. But without support and without interaction, it will be very difficult for us to move forward.

Fostering Innovation Cohesion

We are seeing attempts to stimulate collaboration on innovation. There are programs. However, we were never able to participate as wasn't able to find a suitable partner. This is due to the lack of a unified platform. And, of course, the lack of sufficient measures to stimulate disproportionate cooperation. Large companies are not interested in startups, but they are interested in their final product. But the path to the final product is through assistance and cooperation with end customers.
So the creation of a platform for selected and stimulated cooperation, in our opinion, may be a solution.

Regulating Emerging Technologies

Simplify and subsidize the CE certification of inventions and local technology products. We are faced with the fact that without outside help it is almost impossible to understand the directives, methodology and requirements. There are no step by step instructions. We are forced to turn to third-party companies that set prices many times higher than the entire project budget.
So situation is like we already have a finished product and we are ready to enter the market and understand the importance of certification. But corny cannot budge and are forced to seek funding, instead of earning and paying taxes.
In addition, there is a complete abyss in the legislation regarding robots. Aspects of responsibility and rights of robots are not described. This complicates negotiations with potential customers and insurance companies. Especially when it comes to the Product as a Service model.

Financing Innovation and New Technologies

Facilitate access to finance instruments for technology projects. The number of intermediaries between European funds / programs and startups is amazing. The conditions and requirements for paperwork in the key and most famous programs are such, that companies that ask for money for the correct filling of the questionnaires have appeared on the market. Perhaps someone thinks that this is not a bad thing. But first of all, where does the startup get the money from, if it just applies for it? Secondly, such a huge loss of useful time. Simplify questionnaires and lower the bar on filling requirements. Include in the condition of the financial support programs a mandatory clause on at least 2 years of volunteering in the interests of the fund. Form a commission of founders or their specialists. We are all happy to allocate 3-5 hours per month for the initial assessment of submitted projects. This is the successful experience of such giants in the field of financing like Y Incubator.

Tech Sovereignty

The EU is lagging far behind China and the USA in the innovation race. It is not a question of funds (alone), but of training at all levels (from school children to postgraduate and re-skilling workers), together with the integration of all actors in the process of creation, dissemination and application of innovation, public and private, and the correct management, accessibility and use of European funds. It is a matter of carrying out a great Supranational Plan to achieve the great increase in productivity (based on the idea of the American plans between the 40s and 70s of the last century).

From Education to Entrepreneurship

Private educational institutions are taking the lead over public universities and training centres when it comes to training Europe's future entrepreneurs. There is a need for a major innovative programme in itself, relying on professionals, mentors, creators, entrepreneurs and investors from the private sector, to incorporate them into the public educational fabric and generate a rapid and immediate change in the training, spirit and integration of students towards entrepreneurship, creation and the dissemination of innovation through the business fabric.

Fostering Innovation Cohesion

The integration of the 3 main pillars for the development of innovation needs to be improved. Education, Stakeholder Cohesion and Funding:
Public (pre-employment) education still does not incentivise creation and innovation, based on obsolete educational formats not renewed or adapted to this new era, and training (already in the world of work) only plays the private education sector with high costs for employee and employer who wants to retrain.
The actors in the process of creation, diffusion and application of innovation, public and private, are delocalised and separated. Accelerators, incubators, educational centres, experts, mentors, VCs, Angels, start-ups, continue to play their game in isolation and independently, seeking their own benefit when, if they were to do so in coordination, the benefit for all would be exponential, especially for the users of innovation.
There is room for improvement in the fabric of European innovation funding.

Regulating Emerging Technologies

EUROPEAN SANDBOX: In several EU member states, Sandbox projects are beginning to be tested in which regulation and innovation, the innovating company and the regulator, want to work in a coordinated manner so that regulation finally evolves and keeps pace with innovation. This project should be supranational and supported at the European level by the EU institutions so that it does not remain a national point that cannot be extrapolated to the rest of the member states.

Green Transition

Breastfeeding is not only the healthiest way to nourish a baby but also the one with the least environmental impact. By providing digital breastfeeding support at scale, the European Innovation area could significantly improve families’ carbon footprint of food consumption, as breastmilk is near to carbon neutral. Empowering mothers to breastfeed for as long as they wish does not only significantly improve children and mother’s health, it also makes ecological sense. LactApp provides 24/7 breastfeeding support in the form of a mobile App, has been downloaded by over 650,000 mothers and has answered over 19 million consultations automatically since 2018. LactApp is AI-enabled personalized postnatal maternity advice and breastfeeding support. LactApp is available in Spanish, English and Portuguese; the technology is easily scalable worldwide and other languages can be added.

Europe’s Deep Tech Opportunity

EuropaBio firmly believes that one of Europe’s key Deep Tech opportunities is in genome editing. As such, we propose the creation of a Forum on Genome Editing which would encompass all biotechnology sectors and serve as a platform for dialogue, information sharing and trust building. The Forum would be composed of Member State representatives, industry, researchers, academia, and civil society. Its mandate would include advising policymakers on updating legislation, facilitating innovation in biotechnology and unlocking Europe’s competitiveness, effectively supporting the development of this Deep Tech area and identifying strategic priorities within it. It would also help policymakers adopt a science-based approach to biotechnology products to raise awareness of their benefits. The Forum’s advice will help EU policymakers to engage with the public on the role and potential of advanced solutions and technologies to achieve better health and environmental outcomes.

Green Transition

Artificial intelligence is a disruptive technology that is a strategic asset of nations. Let us start a grand challenge identifying the best AI powered ideas to tackle climate change. This serves multiple purposes. 1. It creates a positive picture for AI when everyone seems to focus only on the risks. 2. It strengthens the European innovation ecosystem at a key technology 3. it creates much needed ideas and solutions for the fight against climate change

Green Transition

How can we organically sequester a gigaton of CO2? By capturing, collecting, and storing carbon, seagrass makes a massive contribution to combating climate change. According to the Helmholtz Climate Initiative, it stores carbon in the soil 30 to 50 times faster than forests on land. Seagrass meadows in the German Baltic Sea have stored about 8.14 million tons of CO2 emissions over an area of 285 square kilometers. Fungal diseases and coastal shipping have already severely depleted seagrass beds. IDEASCANNER uses AI to accelerate digital transformation and sustainable innovation by 10x. In our research, we found that seagrass reintroduction is currently being done painstakingly in small-scale projects by dive schools. Our goal is to work with partners to rapidly scale the recolonization of suitable shallow coastal seagrass beds using underwater robots. In this way, we aim to organically sequester at least one gigaton of CO2 from the atmosphere over the next 10 years.

Green Transition

Pay special attention in all call to the presence, qualitative and quantitative of women. This topic is extremelly relevant for the Green Transition objectives.

From Education to Entrepreneurship

Develop programs and projects to bring female students closer to tech entrepreneurship subjects, calls and opportunities. Monitor and follow-up programs to see if they are working well and which results are bringing.

Women-led VCs and Startups

Establish committees to monitor the funds to make sure they are fairly distributed. Develop opportunities for funds to go exclusively to women and monitor results through ad hoc committees. Require better transparency and reporting on how resources are allocated.

Green Transition

We promote changes to the Education Curriculum to foster sySTEMic thinking to better sensitise citizens to the challenges to the Human Eco-System and to better prepare citizens to come up with innovative solutions and to adapt their personal behaviour based on better insights into Reality 21st century curricula should deliver.
Whilst Literacy & Numeracy remain basic skills, a future proof society must also equip its citizens with Energy, Climate & Resources literacy. In addition Media-Literacy is of paramount importance to protect individual citizens as well as Democracy as a whole.
Strenghthening the Agency of sySTEMic thinking means more critical, logical and holistic thinking which is the only way to meet the challenges ahead of us in a civilised & peaceful way.

Green Transition

Foster the creation of Distributed Cooperative Organisations (DisCOs) -millions of them, to support the implementation of the green transition across the EU and beyond.Organisations of all kinds that prioritise their choice of green impact mission, shared by all its working members, who build care and trust amongs them, supported by the use of DLT (distributed ledger) and federated technologies to enable inter-nodular economic activities.Because these DisCOs would not be only or mainly profit oriented, but see production as oriented to environmental ends, while taking care of its members and wider networks.Work is a function and a balance between 3 main value flows: LIVELIHOOD work,LOVE work and CARE work.The Green Transition mission would be embedded in the LOVE work performed by the organisation and agreed by its members.We need a pan european business fabric that wants to implement the green transition in its multiple facets, lead by people that believe in it and make a living out of it.

Europe’s Deep Tech Opportunity

Smart phones, smart watches, smart scales, smart pressure gauges, etc. There are more and more affordable and even cheap smart devices with various sensors that measure the user's biometric data. A global European platform gathering this data, analysing it by using AI and assessing the probability of different diseases would help with early detection of diseases, and either prevention of their full development or more successful early treatments. Connecting such platform with health records would represent a global system for early detection and prevention of common diseases and thus healthier EU population.

From Education to Entrepreneurship

Provide young people in higher education or in their final year of studies with short courses on career planning and cv building as well as a short intensive job shadowing experience with one or more entrepreneurs. Both the course and the job shadowing should be taught with an intercultural exchange in mid between different EU countries, so that young people can benefit from a multi-national perspective.

Women-led VCs and Startups

Young women in high school should be matched with entrepreneurs and accomplished professionals (men and women) in different fields so that they can see what possibilities are available to them. Thee completed with a group project for the young women to create a start-up proposal, pitch to a mock 'shark tank' group and received a prize for the best ideas. The professionals who offered the exchanges would mentor and train the students for best results.

Women-led VCs and Startups

To quickly and drastically increase investment in women-led startups, the following proposal leverages insights from behavioral decision theory to overcome the cognitive biases infecting the VC landscape, and suggests legal and policy initiatives in combination with advances in technology: 1. promote aggressive tax incentives for investment in women-led startups, 2. extend nondiscrimination law to the founder-investor relationships, and 3. incorporation AI into investment decision-making to counter unconscious biases and improve the quality of startup investments. Inspired by Kimberly A. Houser & Kathryn Kisska-Schulze, Disrupting Venture Capital: Carrots, Sticks and Artificial Intelligence (Forthcoming U.C. IRVINE LAW REVIEW 2023), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4050585

Regulating Emerging Technologies

In order to achieve a level playing field in innovation and ensure that technologies benefit society, regulations must stimulate advances in technology while preserving the values of the European Union. While the GDPR confirms rights for data subjects, some have noted that it unduly burdens the tech industry in Europe. The following proposal seeks to provide a method to preserve data subjects’ rights, while encouraging the sharing of data with SMEs and with organization seeking to advance social good without risking a violation of European privacy law: 1. provide GDPR guidance expressly permitting the use of data trusts, 2. amend Art. 80 re delegation of data rights, and Art. 6(4) on the secondary uses of data in line with data intermediaries, and 3. expressly authorize data trusts as a data intermediary under the Data Governance Act. See Kimberly A. Houser & John Bagby, The Data Trust Solution to Data Sharing Problems, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4050593.

Regulating Emerging Technologies

Improve the frequency and timing of reviewing existing regulations.
The timeline for reviewing and evaluating existing regulation must be streamlined. In the interest of economic efficiency and innovation, regulatory evaluation and the monitoring of impact should seek to remove redundant, onerous and inefficient regulation. This will particularly benefit small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), who are often the ones hurt the most by ineffective regulation.

Green Transition

Global Business Inroads Bulgaria Ltd proposes the following actionable ideas:
1. EU-India Smart Cities collaboration Platform: Sustainability + Digital
2. EU-India Biodiversity and Sustainable Agro-forestry Platform
3. EU-India Farm to ForK Sustainability program: reducing food waste
4. EU-India Sustainable Tech for Transport (Electric Mobility Focus)
5. EU-India Sustainable Fashion and Textile Industry Resource Efficiency
6. EU-India Clean Energy Business & Investment Platform
7. Showcasing EU green technologies to global emerging markets via online platforms. Organising online "Bridge Sessions" to introduce best in class solutions to adopters in global markets. Developing business and project opportunities and handholding the tech companies to develop and make business.
8. Developing pilot and demo project opportunities for innovative EU tech in India
9. Understanding opportunities and challenges for Green transition and sharing it with policy makers

From Education to Entrepreneurship

Create twinning programs between EU and South Asian universities to collaborate on University Tech commercialization, university incubator and start-up collaborations.

Fostering Innovation Cohesion

1. Leverage online platforms to get innovators in digital and sustainable tech to connect with tech adopters
2. Bring together policy makers, corporates, innovators/start-ups to work together on deployment of innovative solutions

Europe’s Deep Tech Opportunity

1. EU-India Digital Transformation and Investment Platform and Roundtable for policymakers (July 23rd, 2021)

Women-led VCs and Startups

Global Business Inroads (GBI) Bulgaria Ltd is a women led business with operations in Europe, India, USA, UK and South East Asia. GBI facilitates scaling of innovative tech access and deployment for the UNSDGs. We can create a global platform for women CEOs and investors with the objective to scale networking and business collaboration between the companies and investors.
1. Launch EU-South Asia (India and Sri Lanka) Women SME and Start-up CEOs Roundtable - Leena/GBI is Enterprise Europe Network(EEN) node in India and together with the Sector Group on Women Entrepreneurs, we can organise an EU-India/South Asia Roundtable and business forum for women led VCs and Start-ups focused on Digital and Green tech innovation.