European Union cohesion policy is being used to fund research, skills and technology projects across the bloc, with around €75 billion from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) programmed for 2021 – 2027 alongside a further €36 billion in national co-financing.
Cohesion policy funding is backing research infrastructure, university facilities, technology centres, digital connectivity, business incubators and support for innovative businesses, the European Commission noted in a report released on Thursday.
Between 2014 and 2020, ERDF support contributed to close to 79,000 scientific publications, more than 75,000 partnerships between businesses and research institutions, and over 7,000 patents, it added.
Regions are encouraged to focus on their own strengths through Smart Specialisation Strategies, a framework used to shape local research and innovation priorities.
Two in three respondents said these strategies were the main framework for research and innovation policy in their region, a Smart Specialisation Study for 2021 – 2027 found.
Lombardy in northern Italy has organised its strategy around broader themes including sustainability and digitalisation, revisiting priorities every two years so they can be updated as technology and markets change.
Funding strategic technologies
Regional priorities are also being linked to the EU’s Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP), which supports development and manufacturing in areas including digital technologies, clean technologies and biotechnology, and also targets skills shortages, the Commission said.
By January 2025, 21 ERDF programmes had incorporated specific STEP-related objectives, before STEP became fully operational.
By the end of March 2026, close to €15 billion in EU support had been allocated, representing €17 billion in total cost.
Examples included €25 million from the ERDF for Mazowiecki Szpital Bródnowski in Poland to build an Interventional Neurotherapy Centre working on gene therapy for Parkinson’s disease.
In Denmark, €4.6 million from the Just Transition Fund backed HYFLEX, a project using surplus renewable electricity from an existing solar park to expand hydrogen storage and cut the energy costs of large-scale electrolysis.
The Commission also pointed to Czechia’s 2021 – 2027 approach, which it said prioritised skills, public-private cooperation, innovation infrastructure and governance before sector-specific specialisation.
From 2014 – 2020, ERDF-supported research in Estonia and parts of Portugal produced some of the highest numbers of patents per capita in Europe, despite not having the scale of the largest research hubs.
Central and eastern EU regions recorded faster growth in scientific publications than western regions over the same period.
