Data Corner: central and eastern Europe does not get much out of the EIC

The EIC Accelerator has a bigger east-west divide than the rest of Horizon Europe The 13 countries that joined the EU in 2004 and afterwards have all struggled to catch up with the older member states when it comes to research funding. But the divide is particularly marked in the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator programme, which was set up in 2021 to support entrepreneurial research teams and start-ups. Here, central and eastern European countries secure only 6% of the grants, compared to 8.3% of Horizon Europe funding overall. Start-ups in the east have won 47 EIC Accelerator grants compared to more than 100 each in France and Germany, 85 in the Netherlands and more than 40 each in Finland and Sweden, two smaller Scandinavian countries. Poland, a country with almost double the population of the Netherlands, six times that of Finland and more than three times that of Sweden, has won only won 10 EIC Accelerator grants, the largest number in the region. ...