Communication: Europe’s next leaders: the Start-up and Scale-up Initiative

Summary:

European public authorities, start-ups and their business partners must act collectively to avoid that the valuable efforts of start-ups are wasted. A partnership with national, regional and local authorities, and especially with the start-ups themselves, is needed. This involves authorities promoting conditions that ensure start-ups can scale up. In return those start-ups can create jobs, compete on the market and be socially responsible. The recent Scale-up Europe Manifesto shows that start-ups are ready to engage. The Commission welcomes this initiative from the actors in the field and its recommendations have informed the Commission's own reflections as far as these issues are concerned.

This initiative addresses three issues: barriers; the shortage of partners and opportunities; and difficulties as regards finance. It is based on:

• coordinated approach across EU policies, building on measures in place or being developed, including sectoral approaches such as in the space sector;
• a limited and targeted set of practical measures; and, above all,
• partnership.