SMEs’ Role in European Innovation: Framework Recommendations to Enable…

Europe is entering the design phase of the 10th Framework Programme (FP10). The choices made now, namely funding rates, eligibility conditions, governance representation, evaluation criteria, and consortium rules, will shape European research and innovation (R&I) for the next decade. For Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), these choices are not operational details: they determine whether SMEs remain peripheral participants in European R&I or become central actors of Europe’s technological capacity. This Position Paper is the contribution of the NetworldEurope SME Working Group (WG) to that design phase. Its added value lies in translating aggregated SME experience into a structured, policy-oriented perspective that directly informs the design parameters of FP10. Find more information here: https://www.networldeurope.eu/smes-role-in-european-innovation-framework-recommendations-to-enable-better-sme-contributions-in-fp10/