European Commission presents EU Startup and Scaleup Strategy

To this end, the Commission will implement five targeted actions: (i) fostering an innovation-friendly environment, (ii) improving funding for start-ups and scale-ups, (iii) supporting the market entry and expansion of start-ups, (iv) attracting and retaining the best talent, (v) facilitating access to infrastructure, networks and services.

Support for the best talent in Europe

The success of a startup heavily relies on access to highly skilled talent. Key obstacles to addressing the talent gap include cross-border mobility barriers, notably barriers to the recognition of qualifications, untapped academic potential, significant underrepresentation of women, and lack of diversity. A major issue also lies in entrepreneurial education, with less than 50% of EU students in secondary and higher education having access to any form of entrepreneurial education, which hinders the development of future entrepreneurs.

Actions (2025-2026)

To retain and attract top talent, start-ups and scale-ups need better access to highly qualified professionals. The strategy introduces the ‘Blue Carpet’ initiative, which focuses in particular on entrepreneurial education, tax aspects of employee stock options and cross-border employment. To this aim, the European Commission will:

• Actively promote and further strengthen entrepreneurial education and upskilling, including through the EIT, promoting gender balanced and diverse participation.
• Develop a blueprint for an academic career development framework that rewards research commercialisation activities, such as in the academic staff evaluation and promotion criteria, as part of the Competence framework of academic staff announced in the Union of Skills.
• Explore best practices concerning the treatment of employee stock options for startups.
• Propose a recommendation to eliminate tax obstacles for remote cross-border employees for startups and scaleups.
• Present a Fair Labour Mobility Package, including a Skills Portability Initiative to facilitate and simplify the recognition of qualifications (2026).
• Adopt an EU Visa Strategy, including measures to better attract highly skilled students, researchers, entrepreneurs and trained workers from third countries to come to the EU (Q4 2025).
• Pilot the Multipurpose Legal Gateway Offices initiative with a specific focus on ICT skills (Q4 2025), serving as a one-stop-shop for information and assistance to highly skilled professionals, students and researchers in the ICT sector, interested in working in the EU.
• Roll-out targeted information activities to promote the EU Blue Card Directive among highly skilled non-EU workers and employers.
• Encourage Member States to put in place fast-track schemes allowing eligible startup founders to obtain a residence and work permit under simplified and expedited procedures.
• Simplify and reinforce existing EURAXESS services for innovators, including by offering bespoke support and information to non-EU talent.

Measuring progress

The Commission will propose a definition of startups, scaleups and innovative companies, taking into account existing definitions of SMEs and small mid-caps (Q12026). The Commission will moreover, set up a European Startup and Scaleup Scoreboard that will measure, based on a set of indicators the performance of the European and national startup and scaleup ecosystems. Indicators will include, among others, the number of startups, scaleups, centaurs and unicorns. Furthermore, the European Commission will carry out an annual startup and scaleup survey to assess the perception of innovative company founders of the improvement in the EU’s regulatory environment over time (as of 2026).