The Letter of Intent sets about common principles, including commitment to the innovators, agility, reactivity, speed and streamlining of innovation policy, resources and efforts, enhancing synergies and efficiencies across the two programmes.

Mariya Gabriel, Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, said:

Both the EIC, with its focus on high-risk, breakthrough technologies that have the potential to create new markets and the EIT, with its focus on combining education, research and innovation to empower innovators, have the same goals – to support innovators to develop and rapidly scale up innovative, sustainable solutions to global challenges in line with European values, creating high quality jobs and inclusive growth. Working better together can only achieve more, more effectively, faster.

More specifically, the Letter of Intent foresees ‘systematic and structural cooperation’, both operationally and financially, between the EIC and the first three EIT KICs, ensuring innovators in the critical climate, energy and digital areas receive maximum support from both programmes to accelerate the development and scaling up of breakthrough innovations and innovative solutions to European and global problems. 

This Letter of Intent comes in advance of the launch of the fully-fledged EIC and the EIT under Horizon Europe, and builds on the pilot actions to test out new collaboration mechanisms which will be launched later this year. The EIC and EIT are part of a wider ecosystem that the EU is putting in place to give Europe's many entrepreneurs every opportunity to become world leading companies. Other complementary initiatives include the Industry strategy, SME strategy, Digital Europe strategy, and the forthcoming European Research Area.

More information

EIC website

EIT website

Factsheet on Horizon Europe