High-level Roundtable on the future of digital investments in Europe: key takeaways

On 26 March 2025, the European Investment Bank (EIB) Group and DIGITALEUROPE brought together key policymakers from the Commission, the EIB Group, investors and industry leaders in strategic sectors in Europe for a pivotal roundtable on the future of digital investments in Europe.

The discussion came at a time when Europe stands at a crossroads: fueled by exceptional talent, skills, pioneering research, and entrepreneurial ambition, the continent continues to lag behind global competitors when it comes to scaling up its innovative businesses, which often end up relocating abroad in search of easier access to growth-stage capital and a more enabling regulatory environment. To address these challenges, Europe must take decisive steps to attract and retain top talent, unlock institutional capital, expand market access, and further enhance the role of public institutions as enablers of growth, ensuring a more competitive and dynamic ecosystem for its digital industries.

This report summarises the main industry recommendations from the roundtable. No attributions are made in line with the Chatham House Rule.

Key takeaways

Building on discussions around Europe’s most pressing digital investment challenges and on global best practices supporting disruptive innovation in other geographies, participants identified five priority areas of action:

1. Simplifying access to funding and speeding up award decisions
Europe’s innovation funding landscape is overly complex, fragmented and slow. Participants called for a simpler system focused on a few core funding programmes, with unified application requirements and reduced paperwork. They also stressed the need for much faster decision-making, aiming to significantly shorten the period between application deadlines and contract signatures to better align with today’s rapid innovation cycles. Improving transparency of award results would also help investors identify and fund innovative companies already having received public funding.

2. Mobilising large scale investment through EU-wide procurement and a unified EU stock market
To support scale-ups and attract private capital, public funding must build on instruments that work and scale-up deals and delivery. It should also shift from fragmented subsidies to strategic, EU-level procurement. A unified EU platform could create the large-scale demand needed to commercialise innovation, particularly in capital-intensive sectors. This approach would also make better use of public investment to crowd in private funds. The creation of a unified European stock market was also mentioned as an important measure to facilitate cross-border capital raising and improve access to funding for high-growth companies.

3. Targeted investment in strategic sectors and Champions
Rather than spreading resources too thinly, Europe should focus on challenges where it can lead—such as secure connectivity, energy efficiency, defence and critical infrastructure. Participants supported a mission-based investment approach and updated competition rules to better support scaling of EU tech champions able to compete in the global markets.

4. Encouraging risk-taking attitude
Europe needs a cultural and regulatory shift to embrace risk-taking and learn from failure. Participants emphasised the importance of backing more high-risk, high-reward projects, even after initial setbacks, by providing investors and innovative companies with second-chance funding opportunities. To build a stronger innovation culture, boosting pension fund investment in venture capital and creating EU-wide incentives for employee equity were seen as crucial, alongside supporting regulatory reforms that enable risk investments by insurance and pension funds.

5. Strengthening public-private collaboration
Industry involvement in EU funding decisions must be strengthened. Participants recommended increasing industry expertise in public funding bodies to enhance the assessment of funding applications and ensure that investment priorities remain aligned with market realities.