Allied For Startups at EU Industry Days 2025

On 5 June, our Head of Policy, Vasco Pereira da Silva, represented Allied For Startups at the EU Industry Days 2025 – the EU’s flagship industrial policy event – taking place in Rzeszów, Poland.

He joined a panel discussion “Building a Strong Deep-Tech Startup & Spin-Off Ecosystem While De-Risking Early-Stage Investments” alongside Paul Walentynowicz (Clean Valley Capital), Christiaan Sluijs (T-Mining), Sven De Cleyn (imec.istart), and Kamil Pruchnik (European Investment Fund).

Our key messages include:

• Europe’s most underestimated challenge is fragmentation: Startups still navigate 27 different markets instead of one Single Market, making EU expansion feel like going international. Despite 30 years of the Single Market, founders face duplicated compliance and regulatory uncertainty when scaling across borders.
• We need smart capital, not just more capital: Deep-tech requires patient investment, de-risking mechanisms, and policies that reward long-term thinking. Public capital must act as a catalyst, crowding in private investors through blended finance and first-loss guarantees.
• The 28th regime must deliver before 2030: Europe needs to become the easiest place to start and scale a deep-tech company – not the slowest. This unified legal framework could finally allow company formation in less than 48 hours and streamline cross-border operations.

With fewer than 10% of global unicorns based in the EU, the time for bold policy action is now.

Thank you to imec.istart for the opportunity to bring a startup policy lens to these critical discussions.