Boosting the “old continent’s” tech sector: €3.5-billion European investment is announced

Good news for European tech SMEs. On the 8th February, France (who is now holding the presidency of the Council of the EU) announced a €3.5 billion investment aimed at increasing Europe’s digital sovereignty by innovating the tech sector. This European initiative, led by France, is called European Tech Champions Initiative (ETCI).

“It is encouraging to see more and more stakeholders working together on initiatives dedicated to European digital sovereignty and SMEs”, commented ECSO Secretary General Luigi Rebuffi. “This action goes in the same direction as ECSO’s work dedicated to the support of SMEs, experience with start-ups, private investors and regional ecosystems, in the specific cybersecurity domain, as well as with the recent launch of the feasibility study on the European Cybersecurity Investment Platform (ECIP). Europe has now the opportunity to leverage on ECSO’s experience in cybersecurity, so we hope that more Member States will join us in this journey to make Europe a strong and competitive global cybersecurity player”, he concluded.

ECSO welcomes this news with excitement, especially given its five-year work on creating match-making events for SMEs (scale-ups and start-ups) to gain investments (ECSO has in fact organised over ten editions of its Cyber Investor Days, with many more to come). In addition, ECSO has been working closely with the European Investment Advisory Hub, a joint advisory initiative of the European Investment Bank (EIB) Group, and the European Commission on a feasibility study to design and set-up a European Cybersecurity Investment Platform (ECIP). This initiative promoted by the Basque Country on behalf of the “Cyber Smart Regions” is expected to attract more investment in the European cybersecurity market.

ECSO’s joint initiative with the EIB and the European Commission, together with Europe’s latest investment, is a clear sign of the willingness of the cybersecurity and tech sector to work in a unified and supportive market, thanks to which Europe could become more competitive in the global arena and work its way towards digital autonomy and sovereignty.

More information about ECSO’s joint European Cybersecurity Investment Platform is available here.