This position paper summarises the opinion of the EAIC (European Association of Innovation Consultants). EAIC comprises 50 members present in 26 European Countries, supporting around 40% of all the companies awarded EIC Accelerator funding in 2021.

We acknowledge that the EIC Accelerator is the most impactful and coveted funding instrument that the EC has at its disposal to fund high-risk deep-tech innovation. The funding decisions made by the EIC in the coming years will durably shape the future of European deeptech, with €7bn allocated to the EIC Accelerator, which will fuel the next European champions in strategic domains such as quantum, bioinformatics, high- performance computing, cybersecurity, cleantech, healthcare, etc.

The companies that we support are highly concerned about how equity investments approved under the Horizon 2020 Pilot have been severely delayed, following a drastic change in the EIC Fund investment policy. Delays are moreover increased as the adoption of the work programme 2022 is currently at a standstill, because there has been no agreement on how to manage and implement the equity component of the EIC Accelerator under Horizon Europe. This is severely impacting the credibility of the instrument.

The Work Programme draft goes one step further by placing the equity investment decisions in the hands of various EIC investment partners including the EIC Fund, the European Investment Bank Group and private venture capital funds, while increasing the administrative expenses and fees from 4% to 10% of the equity investment budget, in order to support these new investment partners.

The proposed new approach violates both the spirit and the letter of the EIC legal basis.

The European Commission cannot make the EIC support dependent on the interest of private investors to join, and transform the objective to crowd them in, into a pre-condition.

The EIC programme was meant to be different from similar programmes run at Member States, where initial co-investment is an obligation. This radically new design led the European Council of Spring 2018 - held in Sofia - to request that the EIC Accelerator be already implemented as a Pilot programme, pending the adoption and entry into force of Horizon Europe.

We believe the EIC should go back to this original mission of a European sovereign investment mechanism, as initially foreseen by the European Parliament and European Council. The European Commission should remain the single decision-maker with regards to EIC equity funding. The EIC Fund should only be responsible for the investment implementation modalities and exit strategy, as per the Council Decision.

​ Moreover, we consider that the governance of the current EIC Fund should be opened to stakeholders such as impact investment funds, corporate funds, entrepreneur funds and business angels, in addition to venture capital funds. Finally, the EIC should add considerable resources to actively manage investments and match them with these investors.

Feedback from the June 2021 cut-off

Based on a survey of 23 of its members, the European Association of Innovation Consultants (EAIC) has released a position paper, which summarises the return of experience from the first batch of applicants about the design and usage of the submission tool.
 
To improve the robustness of the evaluation process, the EIC made significant changes to the EIC Accelerator submission process in 2021: a new 3-step submission process, a novel AI-based diagnostic tool, a new online application form, and a fully redesigned evaluation system. 

The new format proved to be successful in filtering out proposals that are not a good fit for the EIC Accelerator through Step 0 (diagnostic) and Step 1 (short proposal). This consequently improved the quality level of Step 2 applications, while unsuccessful applicants were recommended programs that may suit their proposals better instead of attempting to resubmit their application many times over.
 
The new format also generated certain criticisms mainly because it might lead the EIC to miss out some real innovation champions due to technical evaluation errors. In order to cope with the issue of “false negatives” and to improve the selection process further, the EAIC has put forward a series of recommendations, some of which are already being implemented already by the EIC:

•    Add simple control questions to the evaluation form to ensure proper understanding of the selection criteria, and implement a specific quality control process for cases awarded 8 “GOs” out of 9;

•    Add a “print to pdf” function for online form, as well as an improved table of content with hyperlinks in order to get a more comprehensive view, including hidden or collapsible fields, and improve the navigation throughout the document itself;

•    Make sure the evaluators’ background is relevant to the topic and their workload is within reasonable limits.

The data from the survey also demonstrated that, while the application workload is now 2.5x what it was in 2020, our members were able to achieve a success rate 3x above the average.

The EIC Accelerator has undergone a true revolution, with positive and negative consequences, but we are convinced that the minor improvements recommended in this paper can go a long way in reducing the risk of missing out real innovation champions for technical evaluation reasons.