From Scientific Gardener to Innovation Architect: The Strategic Evolution of the EIC Pathfinder
This report charts the strategic evolution of the European Union's flagship funding instrument for deep-tech research, from its origins as the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) programme to its current incarnation as the European Innovation Council (EIC) Pathfinder. This transformation represents a pivotal and deliberate policy shift: from a philosophy of nurturing serendipitous, bottom-up scientific exploration towards a more interventionist, market-oriented model designed to forge a direct pipeline from breakthrough science to European industrial competitiveness. This evolution, marked by structural disruptions like the introduction of DARPA-inspired Programme Managers and a dual-track funding approach, has created a new landscape of opportunities and challenges, with clear winners and losers. We will analyze this journey through a deep dive into programme structures, a data-driven assessment of funding distribution, and an expert synthesis of the political and institutional debates that will define the Pathfinder's future in the forthcoming Framework Programme 10 (FP10).
The Genesis: Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) in Horizon 2020
The story of the EIC Pathfinder begins with its direct predecessor, the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) programme, a cornerstone of the "Excellent Science" pillar within the Horizon 2020 framework (2014-2020). FET was conceived with a grand and visionary purpose: to be the EU's primary vehicle for investing in the scientific and technological paradigms of the distant future. It was designed to occupy a unique space in the European research landscape, distinct from both the pure "blue-sky" science of the European Research Council (ERC) and the more applied, industry-driven research of the other pillars.
A Vision for Radically New Technologies
The core mission of FET was to "turn Europe's excellent science base into a competitive advantage" by initiating "radically new lines of technology through unexplored collaborations". The language used by the European Commission to describe FET was deliberately ambitious, framing it as a programme that goes "beyond what is known" to explore the "magic" of visionary research. With a provisional budget of €2.696 billion under Horizon 2020, it represented a substantial and dedicated investment in Europe's deep-tech future.
The programme's uniqueness was codified in a set of defining characteristics, often referred to as the "FET gatekeepers." To be considered, a project had to demonstrate all of the following:
- Long-term vision: A radical, original vision of a future technology.
- Breakthrough S&T target: A concrete scientific and technological breakthrough toward that vision.
- Novelty: A non-incremental approach, venturing into unknown areas.
- Foundational: The research had to be foundational in character, establishing a new basis for a future technology.
- High-risk: The research had to be inherently high-risk, with a corresponding potential for high reward.
- Interdisciplinary: The research required deep collaboration across diverse scientific and engineering disciplines.
This combination of attributes positioned FET as the EU's incubator for fragile, unconventional ideas that were too nascent for industrial research roadmaps and too collaborative for individual investigator grants like the ERC.
The Three-Tiered Architecture: A Coherent Innovation Ecosystem
The FET programme was not a monolithic entity. It was structured as a coherent ecosystem of three complementary schemes, each designed to address different scales and stages of technological maturity, from a single novel idea to a grand societal challenge. This structure reflected a "gardening" philosophy, where the goal was to cultivate an entire innovation landscape, from seed to forest.
- FET-Open: This was the seed-planting stage, the programme's bottom-up engine. It was designed as a "light-and-fast" scheme, completely open to any research idea for a new technology without predefined themes. Its purpose was to act as an "early detection mechanism" for promising new trends and to attract new, high-potential actors like young researchers and high-tech SMEs. Reflecting its foundational importance, FET-Open was allocated a significant 40% of the total FET budget.
- FET-Proactive: This was the nurturing stage, designed to cultivate emerging themes and structure new research communities around them. It took promising areas identified through consultations and early results from FET-Open and provided targeted funding to build a "critical mass" of European excellence. The goal was to mature these novel areas to a point where they might eventually be ready for industrial roadmaps. Thematic priorities during Horizon 2020 included foundational areas like 'Quantum Simulation', 'Towards exascale high-performance computing', and 'Knowing, doing and being: cognition beyond problem solving', showcasing a focus on the future of computing, AI, and quantum technologies.
- FET-Flagships: This was the grand challenge stage, representing the most ambitious and large-scale component of the programme. These were massive, 10-year, billion-euro initiatives requiring joint investment from the EU and member states to tackle monumental scientific goals. The two flagships supported under Horizon 2020, the 'Graphene' flagship and the 'Human Brain Project' (HBP), were inherited from the previous framework programme, FP7, and aimed to achieve transformational impacts on science, technology, and society.
The H2020 Reality: A Victim of Its Own Success?
While the philosophy of FET was widely praised, its implementation, particularly for the popular FET-Open scheme, revealed significant systemic flaws that would ultimately necessitate its transformation. The programme quickly became a victim of its own success, attracting a deluge of proposals that far outstripped its budget.
From the outset, FET-Open was plagued by chronic oversubscription and, consequently, brutally low success rates. Data from an early call in 2015 revealed a success rate of only 4%, with a staggering 60% of submitted proposals failing to even meet the minimum quality threshold. This was not an isolated incident. Official statistics for the Research and Innovation Actions (RIA) under FET-Open show a consistent and punishing level of competition: success rates were 3.7% in September 2014, plunged to 1.7% in March 2015, and were estimated at a mere 1.1%-1.3% in September 2015. While rates did climb in later years, reaching over 10% in the 2018-2020 work programme, the overall picture was one of extreme hyper-competitiveness.
This created a "lottery" effect, where thousands of person-hours were spent preparing excellent proposals, only for the vast majority to be rejected due to budget limitations. This left a great deal of "great interdisciplinary thinking unrewarded" and generated significant frustration within the European research community.
Compounding the problem was a severe and persistent geographical imbalance. The 2015 data revealed that 97% of successful FET-Open projects and 91% of FET-Proactive projects were coordinated by institutions in the EU15 countries (the member states prior to the 2004 enlargement). This "winner-takes-all" dynamic effectively excluded researchers from the "Widening" countries of Central and Eastern Europe from Europe's most forward-looking research programme. The system was not just rewarding excellence; it was rewarding those in already excellent and well-resourced ecosystems, creating a powerful political and practical impetus for reform. The systemic unsustainability of rejecting over 95% of applicants and concentrating success in a handful of countries created an undeniable mandate for change, paving the way for the radical overhaul that would come with Horizon Europe.
The Great Transition: The Birth of the European Innovation Council (EIC)
The transition from the Horizon 2020 framework to Horizon Europe (2021-2027) marked the most significant disruption in the history of the EU's deep-tech funding strategy. The core principles of the FET programme were not abandoned, but were instead absorbed, repurposed, and fundamentally reoriented within a new, more assertive entity: the European Innovation Council (EIC). This was not merely an evolution; it was a revolution in philosophy and practice.
A New Pillar for a New Ambition: From "Science" to "Innovation"
The most profound strategic change was the relocation of FET's successor, the Pathfinder, from its home in Pillar 1 "Excellent Science" to the newly created Pillar 3 "Innovative Europe". This was far more than an administrative reshuffle; it was a clear signal of a new primary purpose. While still committed to funding excellent science, the programme's raison d'être shifted from nurturing science for its own sake to actively "stimulating market-creating breakthroughs and ecosystems conducive to innovation". The new objective was to identify and support "innovations with potential breakthrough and disruptive nature with scale-up potential". The vocabulary of the programme pivoted from the scientific ("paradigm-changing") to the economic ("market-creating," "disruptive," "scale-up").
This move was not a sudden decision. It was foreshadowed in the final years of Horizon 2020, with the FET Advisory Group (FETAG) itself advocating for the integration of FET into a future EIC. This led to the launch of an EIC pilot programme within Horizon 2020, which brought FET-Open and FET-Proactive under a single umbrella with the SME Instrument (now the EIC Accelerator), creating the nascent structure of the future innovation pipeline.
From FET to Pathfinder: Key Changes in Mechanics
The rebranding from FET to Pathfinder came with several crucial changes to the programme's mechanics, reflecting the new innovation-centric philosophy.
First, the concept of high-risk/high-gain was formalized and elevated to an official "gatekeeper" criterion. While high risk was always a feature of FET, the explicit addition of "high gain" forced applicants to articulate the potential reward—often in economic or societal terms—more clearly. This subtle but critical change moved the focus from intellectual risk to a more balanced assessment of risk versus potential market or societal reward.
Second, the evaluation process itself was updated with the introduction of a rebuttal stage. This significant procedural change allows applicants a short window to respond to evaluators' comments, addressing potential misunderstandings or factual errors. This was a direct response to long-standing feedback from the research community about the perceived fairness and quality of evaluations in the hyper-competitive H2020 era, where a single misinterpreted point could doom a proposal.
The table below summarizes the key evolutionary shifts from the FET-Open scheme to its successor, the EIC Pathfinder Open.
| Characteristic | FET-Open (H2020) | EIC Pathfinder Open (Horizon Europe) | Significance of Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parent Programme/Pillar | Horizon 2020 / Pillar 1: Excellent Science | Horizon Europe / Pillar 3: Innovative Europe | Fundamental strategic shift from pure science to market-oriented innovation. |
| Core Philosophy | Fostering radically new, high-risk, interdisciplinary ideas | Developing the scientific basis for breakthrough, deep-tech, market-creating technologies | Shift in emphasis from scientific paradigm to economic disruption. |
| Key "Gatekeepers" | Long-term vision, Breakthrough target, Novelty, Foundational, High-risk, Interdisciplinary | Ambitious long-term vision, High-risk/high-gain breakthrough research | Streamlining of criteria with "high-gain" becoming an explicit, formal requirement. |
| Evaluation Process | Single-step peer review | Single-step peer review with a new Rebuttal procedure | Increased fairness and transparency for applicants. |
| Management Style | Passive management by agency Project Officers | Active portfolio awareness by EIC Programme Managers, even for Open projects | Introduction of a more hands-on, strategic oversight layer. |
| Follow-on Opportunities | Ad-hoc (e.g., FET Innovation Launchpad) | Formalized pathway to EIC Transition and EIC Accelerator | Creation of a structured innovation pipeline from lab to market. |
The Programme Manager: A DARPA-Inspired Disruption
Perhaps the most profound and disruptive change in the transition to the EIC was the introduction of EIC Programme Managers (PMs), a role explicitly modeled on the highly successful US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). This move signaled a shift away from a purely peer-review-driven system towards a hybrid model incorporating active, expert-led strategic management.
EIC PMs are not passive administrators; they are temporary, full-time staff with deep technical expertise and the authority to shape and steer the EIC's portfolio. Their responsibilities represent a radical departure from the traditional role of an EU project officer:
- Developing Strategic Visions: PMs are responsible for identifying emerging technology trends and developing visions for breakthroughs. This intelligence is used to define the top-down "Challenges" for the Pathfinder programme.
- Curating Portfolios: For the Challenge calls, PMs play a "key role" alongside external evaluators in selecting projects. The goal is not just to fund the best individual proposals, but to build a coherent "portfolio" of projects that approach a challenge from different, complementary angles.
- Active Management: Once a portfolio is selected, the PM actively manages it, developing common roadmaps, fostering collaboration and data sharing between projects, and brokering connections to stakeholders, investors, and the later-stage EIC instruments (Transition and Accelerator).
The creation of the PM role represents a significant centralization of strategic power. Where the FET model diffused authority among thousands of peer reviewers, the EIC model empowers a small cadre of experts to direct significant funding towards specific technological goals. This introduces a new dynamic where success in the Challenge calls depends not just on a proposal's intrinsic merit, but on its alignment with a PM's strategic vision. This was a deliberate choice to move beyond the pure serendipity of FET and towards a model of managed, strategic innovation, designed to build a direct and efficient conveyor belt from the lab to the market.
The EIC Pathfinder in Practice: A Dual-Track Approach to Innovation
Under Horizon Europe, the EIC Pathfinder operates as a sophisticated, dual-track instrument designed to balance two distinct innovation philosophies. It retains a purely bottom-up channel for unsolicited, radical ideas while simultaneously deploying a top-down, strategically steered approach to tackle predefined challenges. This hybrid structure is the EIC's answer to the long-standing debate between fostering serendipity and directing research towards specific goals.
Pathfinder Open: The Bottom-Up Engine Persists
The Pathfinder Open stream is the direct descendant of FET-Open, preserving its core identity as a funding mechanism for projects in "any field of science, technology or application without predefined thematic priorities". Its fundamental objective is to support the very earliest stages of research and development, typically spanning Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) 1 to 4. The expected outcome of a Pathfinder Open project is not a market-ready product, but a "proof of principle" that validates the scientific and technological feasibility of a new, visionary idea.
Structurally, it remains a collaborative instrument, requiring consortia of at least three independent legal entities from three different EU Member or Associated States. Grants are typically capped at €3 million, although higher amounts can be requested if duly justified. For the 2025 work programme, the Pathfinder Open has a dedicated budget of €142 million.
However, the "Open" nature of the call can be misleading for newcomers. It is not a blue-sky research fund akin to the ERC. It is intensely competitive and proposals are rigorously assessed against the core EIC gatekeepers: a radical long-term vision and a credible, high-risk/high-gain research approach to achieve a science-towards-technology breakthrough. The high rate of oversubscription means that only the most ambitious and well-articulated proposals have a realistic chance of success.
Pathfinder Challenges: A Top-Down Strategic Steer
In parallel, the Pathfinder Challenges stream functions as the successor to FET-Proactive. It is a top-down instrument designed to "support coherent portfolios of projects within predefined thematic areas" in order to achieve specific, strategic objectives for the European Union.
The defining feature of this stream is the central role of the EIC Programme Managers. The Challenges are not arbitrary; they are developed by PMs based on strategic intelligence and are explicitly designed to align with major EU policy priorities, such as the European Green Deal, the Chips Act, and the drive for strategic autonomy. This instrument allows the EU to direct its most forward-looking research funding towards solving clearly identified problems and building capacity in critical technological areas.
The evolution of these thematic priorities provides a clear window into the EU's shifting strategic focus, as shown in the table below.
| Framework Programme | Scheme | Example Topics/Challenges | Underlying Driver |
|---|---|---|---|
| H2020 (2014-2017) | FET-Proactive | 'Global Systems Science', 'Quantum simulation', 'Cognition beyond problem solving' | Broad, foundational scientific and technological domains. |
| H2020 (2018-2020) | FET-Proactive / EIC Pilot | 'AI for extended social interaction', 'Breakthrough zero-emissions energy storage', 'Digital twins for the life-sciences' | Sharper focus on emerging technologies and alignment with early EU political priorities (Green Deal, Digital Age). |
| Horizon Europe (2023) | EIC Pathfinder Challenges | 'Clean and efficient cooling', 'Precision nutrition', 'Responsible electronics' | Specific, targeted technological problems linked to clear societal missions (sustainability, health, digital transition). |
| Horizon Europe (2024) | EIC Pathfinder Challenges | 'Solar-to-X devices', 'Cement and concrete as a carbon sink', 'Nanoelectronics for energy-efficient smart edge devices' | Highly strategic, industry-relevant challenges tied to EU autonomy and competitiveness (e.g., Chips Act, Net Zero Industry). |
| Horizon Europe (2025) | EIC Pathfinder Challenges | 'Biotech for Climate Resilient Crops', 'Generative-AI for Cancer', 'Autonomous robot collectives for construction', 'Waste-to-value devices' | Continued focus on strategic autonomy, health, and circular economy, with an embrace of cutting-edge tech like GenAI. |
The ultimate goal of the Challenges stream is not just to fund excellent individual projects, but to build a portfolio of projects. The PM actively curates this portfolio to ensure multiple, complementary, and sometimes competing approaches are explored to de-risk an entire technological area. This portfolio-based approach is a radical departure from traditional grant funding. In terms of structure, Challenge calls offer more flexibility, sometimes allowing for single applicants or smaller consortia, and provide larger grants of up to €4 million. The 2025 budget allocates €120 million across four distinct challenges.
The Support Ecosystem: Beyond the Grant
A critical and defining feature of the entire EIC programme is the comprehensive support system that extends far beyond the financial grant. This ecosystem is designed to actively shepherd projects along the innovation pipeline.
All Pathfinder beneficiaries, from both Open and Challenge calls, gain access to Business Acceleration Services (BAS). This suite of services provides tailor-made support, including access to expert coaches and mentors, specialized training, and networking opportunities with global partners, corporates, and investors.
Furthermore, the Pathfinder is explicitly designed as the first step on a larger funding ladder. Successful projects are eligible to apply for EIC Booster grants of up to €50,000 to conduct complementary activities, such as market analysis or business plan development, to explore their innovation potential. More importantly, having a Pathfinder project is a key eligibility criterion for applying to the EIC Transition programme. Transition grants are significantly larger (up to €2.5 million) and are specifically designed to take a promising proof-of-concept (TRL 4) and mature it towards validation in relevant environments and the development of a solid business case (up to TRL 6). This creates a powerful, structured, and incentivized pathway to translate foundational research into tangible impact.
Winners and Losers: A Data-Driven Analysis of Impact and Distribution
An objective assessment of the EIC Pathfinder and its predecessor, FET, requires a clear-eyed look at the data. While the programme's ambition is to seed the future of European technology, its practical implementation has produced clear patterns of success and exclusion. The statistics on funding distribution, success rates, and participant types reveal a complex landscape of winners and losers, shaped by intense competition and persistent structural imbalances.
The Battle for Funding: Success Rates and Oversubscription
The transition from FET to the EIC has not solved the fundamental problem of extreme oversubscription in the bottom-up funding stream. The Pathfinder Open call remains one of the most competitive in the world, with success rates that are often punishingly low.
Between 2021 and 2024, the average success rate for Pathfinder Open was just 6.4%. The 2024 call saw this figure drop to a mere 4.1%, with only 45 projects funded from 1,110 evaluated proposals. This trend of intensifying competition is set to continue; the 2025 Open call attracted a record-breaking 2,087 proposals, which, against an indicative budget of €142 million, points to a potential success rate of around 2.3%—an all-time low.
This creates a two-speed system within the Pathfinder. The top-down Challenge calls consistently boast higher success rates. In 2021, 2022, and 2023, the Challenge success rates were 10.4%, 11.2%, and 11.6% respectively—significantly higher than the Open call rates in the same years (6.9%, 7.7%, and 7.9%). This disparity creates a powerful incentive for research consortia to align their ideas with the top-down strategic priorities defined by Programme Managers, making the Challenge calls a "safer bet" for applicants. The bottom-up Open call, while philosophically central, risks becoming a residual category for those whose brilliant ideas do not fit the predefined strategic boxes.
| Year | Call/Scheme | Submitted Proposals | Funded Proposals | Budget (€M) | Success Rate (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | FET-Open RIA | 639 | 24 | 78.1 | 3.7% |
| 2015 | FET-Open RIA (Mar) | 665 | 11 | 41.0 | 1.7% |
| 2016 | FET-Open RIA (May) | 544 | 23 | 87.8 | 4.2% |
| 2018-20 | FET-Open (avg) | - | - | - | >10% |
| 2021 | Pathfinder Open | 868 | 60 | 180.2 | 6.9% |
| 2021 | Pathfinder Challenges | 403 | 42 | 146.8 | 10.4% |
| 2022 | Pathfinder Open | 858 | 66 | 197.2 | 7.7% |
| 2022 | Pathfinder Challenges | 436 | 49 | 178.2 | 11.2% |
| 2023 | Pathfinder Open | 783 | 62 | 179.0 | 7.9% |
| 2023 | Pathfinder Challenges | 371 | 43 | 163.5 | 11.6% |
| 2024 | Pathfinder Open | 1110 | 45 | 138.0 | 4.1% |
The Geographical Divide: A Persistent Imbalance
One of the most significant and persistent failings of the programme is its inability to overcome the geographical R&I divide within Europe. The concentration of funding in a small number of Western European countries, a problem identified early in the FET era, has largely continued under the EIC Pathfinder.
During Horizon 2020, an overwhelming 97% of successful FET-Open projects were coordinated by institutions in the EU15. The final evaluation of the entire Horizon 2020 programme confirmed this trend, with roughly half of all funding going to just four countries: Germany, the UK, France, and Spain.
This pattern has proven difficult to break in Horizon Europe. Analysis of Pathfinder calls between 2022 and 2023 shows that Spain, Italy, France, and the Netherlands were the most consistently awarded countries. In the 2024 Pathfinder Open call, the top four performing countries—Italy, Germany, Spain, and France—accounted for 47% of all selected projects. Another analysis of the same call identified Italy, Austria, and Spain as the leaders. While the exact order may vary by call, the "winners" are consistently drawn from the same pool of established R&I powerhouses.
The "losers" in this dynamic are the researchers and institutions from the "Widening" countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Despite dedicated EU policies like "Spreading Excellence and Widening Participation," these countries remain significantly underrepresented in Europe's most prestigious and forward-looking funding scheme. This points to a deeper systemic issue: simply providing open funding opportunities is insufficient to overcome national disparities in R&I investment, support infrastructure, and institutional grant-writing capacity. The programme excels at rewarding existing excellence but struggles to build it where it is most needed.
The Participants: Academia's Stronghold and the Rise of the SME
In terms of participant types, universities and public research organizations remain the bedrock of the Pathfinder programme. In the 2024 Open call, these academic institutions accounted for 68% of all participants (46% from higher education and 22% from research organizations).
However, a clear winner in the evolution from FET to EIC has been the Small and Medium-sized Enterprise (SME). The EIC's explicit focus on innovation and market creation has made industry participation not just desirable but arguably essential for a competitive proposal. In the 2024 call, SMEs accounted for 22% of all participants. A separate analysis found that 35% of all partners were for-profit organizations, and crucially, that all but one funded consortium included at least one company. This is a remarkably high level of industry involvement for research at such a low TRL (1-4) and signals a major strategic shift. The inclusion of an SME has become a key indicator of a project's credibility, demonstrating to evaluators that the consortium has a tangible link to exploitation and is aligned with the EIC's core mission of bridging the gap from lab to market.
Thematic Hotspots: Is "Bottom-Up" Truly Bottom-Up?
While the Pathfinder Open call is thematically unrestricted, analysis of funded projects reveals clear "hotspots" where funding tends to concentrate. This suggests that even in a bottom-up competition, proposals that align with broader European strategic priorities have an implicit advantage.
Across multiple calls, health and medical technology has emerged as the dominant field. In the Pathfinder calls of 2022 and 2023, health-related projects consistently accounted for a massive share of the funded portfolio, ranging from 43% to over 54%. The 2024 Open call continued this trend, with medical technology being the most prominent research area, alongside a specific cluster of projects on cancer research.
Other recurring hotspots include quantum technologies and photonics, and environmental and energy technologies. This concentration is logical; projects in these areas can more easily construct a compelling "Impact" narrative that resonates with the EU's major political goals—the green and digital transitions, and public health. While the programme remains open to all ideas, the evaluation framework and the overarching mission of the EIC subtly favor those that speak the language of strategic European priorities.
The Future Trajectory: EIC Pathfinder in FP10 and Beyond
As the European research community looks towards the 10th Framework Programme (FP10), set to begin in 2028, the future of the EIC Pathfinder is a subject of intense debate. The discussions, captured in position papers from major stakeholder groups, reveal a central tension regarding the programme's core identity and structure. The path forward will be shaped by the resolution of this conflict, alongside broader pressures on the EU budget and a relentless drive for simplification.
The Core Debate: Reverting to Open vs. Doubling Down on the Continuum
The hybrid nature of the Pathfinder, with its dual Open and Challenge tracks, has sparked a fundamental debate about its future design. Three main camps have emerged among key stakeholders.
- The "Back to Basics" Camp: Represented by organizations like EU-LIFE (an alliance of leading life science research institutes), this group argues that the top-down, Challenge-driven approach is fundamentally at odds with the exploratory, serendipitous nature of low-TRL research. They contend that true breakthroughs are unpredictable and that imposing strategic priorities stifles innovation. Their primary recommendation is that in FP10, the EIC Pathfinder should be based solely on an open, bottom-up approach, maximizing its potential to fund truly radical and unforeseen ideas.
- The "Continuum" Camp: Embodied by France's CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research), this group strongly supports maintaining the full EIC structure—Pathfinder, Transition, and Accelerator—as a coherent innovation pipeline. They see value in both the Open and Challenge calls and advocate for strengthening the continuum from fundamental research to market application. Their focus is on ensuring a smooth and efficient transfer between the pillars, for example by having more collaborative projects at low TRLs and ensuring better overlap between the programmes.
- The "Hybrid/Restructure" Camp: Proposed by Norway's NTNU (Norwegian University of Science and Technology), this position offers a structural compromise. It suggests splitting the Pathfinder's current functions into two distinct instruments: reintroducing a FET-Open-like scheme in Pillar 1 ("Excellent Science") for pure, collaborative exploration, while revising the EIC Pathfinder in Pillar 3 ("Innovative Europe") to focus explicitly on deep-tech development and its complementarity with the new FET-Open. This approach acknowledges that the programme currently serves two different masters—pure science and strategic innovation—and that they might be better served in separate but interconnected homes.
The table below summarizes these competing visions for the Pathfinder's future.
| Stakeholder | Key Position on Pathfinder Structure | Main Justification | Other Key Recommendations |
|---|---|---|---|
| EU-LIFE | Revert to a solely Open, bottom-up Pathfinder. | Challenge-driven approach conflicts with the exploratory nature of low-TRL research. | Widen eligibility for EIC Transition; reduce business plan requirements for Pathfinder proposals. |
| CNRS (France) | Maintain the full EIC continuum (Pathfinder, Transition, Accelerator) with both Open and Challenge calls. | A better-connected 3-pillar structure is needed to ensure a smooth transfer from fundamental research to innovation. | Increase collaborative projects at low TRLs; ensure better overlap of TRLs between pillars. |
| NTNU (Norway) | Reintroduce FET-Open in Pillar 1; revise EIC Pathfinder in Pillar 3 to be complementary. | Acknowledges the need for both pure exploration (Pillar 1) and mission-oriented deep-tech development (Pillar 3). | Focus on deep-tech talent development. |
| LERU | Strengthen EIC Pathfinder and Transition schemes with increased budgets. | These schemes are successful and vital parts of the R&I process. | Introduce more bottom-up calls at "destination" level in Pillar 2; more two-stage applications. |
Key Recommendations and Pressures for FP10
Beyond the structural debate, a consensus is forming around several key issues that will shape FP10. There is a near-unanimous call from stakeholders for a significantly larger budget, with figures of at least €200 billion being proposed for the entire framework programme. This is seen as essential to address the chronic underfunding and low success rates that plague the most competitive schemes.
There is also a consistent demand for radical simplification. Researchers and institutions are calling for a reduction in bureaucratic burdens and more streamlined application and management processes to make the programme more accessible and efficient. However, some simplification measures, such as the use of lump-sum funding for low-TRL projects, are viewed with caution, as they may reduce the flexibility needed for high-risk research.
These discussions are taking place against a complex political backdrop. There are fears within the research community that R&I funding could be absorbed into a broader "European Competitiveness Fund," potentially diluting its focus on scientific excellence and losing its distinct identity. Consequently, there is a strong lobbying effort to ensure FP10 remains a standalone, dedicated programme for research and innovation.
Analyst's Outlook: The Irreversible Path to Managed Innovation
The evolution from the scientifically-driven FET to the market-oriented EIC Pathfinder was not an accident. It was a deliberate and strategic policy response to the long-perceived "valley of death" between Europe's world-class science and its relative weakness in translating those discoveries into market-leading companies. The core innovations of the EIC—the creation of a full-spectrum pipeline from Pathfinder to Accelerator and the introduction of active portfolio management via Programme Managers—are therefore highly unlikely to be reversed. They represent a fundamental shift in how the EU views the role of public funding in the innovation process.
The central debate for FP10 will not be whether to have strategic, top-down instruments, but how to best balance them with the bottom-up engine that remains crucial for generating the unforeseen breakthroughs of tomorrow. In this context, the NTNU proposal for a structural separation—a revived FET-Open in the science pillar and a focused EIC Pathfinder in the innovation pillar—presents a compelling and logical compromise. It could resolve the inherent philosophical tension within the current model, allowing each instrument to perform its function without compromise.
Regardless of the final structure, the focus of the EIC Pathfinder is set to intensify on "deep tech" and technologies deemed critical for Europe's "strategic autonomy," such as quantum, AI, advanced materials, and biotech. The role of the Programme Manager will likely be further entrenched and expanded, and their ability to build and steer high-impact portfolios will become a key metric of the EIC's success. The Pathfinder has completed its journey from being a patron of promising science to becoming a key architect of European technological sovereignty, and its future path will be one of ever-closer alignment with the strategic and economic ambitions of the Union.