The New European Innovation Agenda
The New European Innovation Agenda (NEIA) will help Europe to develop new technologies, to address the most pressing societal challenges and bring them on the market. Europe wants to be the place where the best talent work hand in hand with the best companies and where deep tech innovation thrives and creates breakthrough inspiring solutions across the continent.
The European Innovation Ecosystems projects contribute to the Agenda by:
- Scaling up of deep tech innovations
- Boosting innovation procurement
- Connecting the European Innovation Ecosystems
Regional Innovation Valleys
In the context of the New European Innovation Agenda, the Regional Innovation Valleys (RIVs) initiative aims to create connected regional innovation valleys across the European Union (EU), involving regions with lower innovation performances, by building on strategic areas of regional strength and specialisation (defined in their smart specialisation strategies), in support of key EU priorities.
As of 10 May 2025, 147 regions in Europe have received the Regional Innovation Valleys label as a recognition to their commitment to enhance the coordination and directionality of their R&I investment and policies, at regional level.
Projects
With an overall commitment of EUR 170 million for the whole RIVs' initiative, the first beneficiaries will receive approximately EUR 116 million, with nearly EUR 54 million from the European Innovation Ecosystems Work Programme, under Horizon Europe, and over EUR 62 million from the Interregional Innovation Investments (I3) Instrument under the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).
For further information about the Regional Innovation Valley I3 Instrument calls, please visit this page and for further information on the similarities and differences between the EIE and I3 calls, please consult these guidelines.
The UNITE project is dedicated to advancing digital health technologies to alleviate the pressures faced by healthcare professionals in managing demographic transitions and the emerging "silver economy." By emphasising collaborative and innovative solutions, the UNITE project seeks to address the evolving needs of an aging population and the shortage of healthcare professionals, ultimately enhancing Europe's digital health market and its global competitiveness
The RIVCircular will connect innovation ecosystems across Europe to advance towards circular economy in five key areas: Construction and Demolition Waste (CDW) circularity, Waste-resource and energy recapture, Electric Vehicle (EV) batteries recycling, Circular economy in textile industry and Digitalisation of circular economy.
PRECISEU connects innovation ecosystems across Europe for a truly personalised medicine (PM). It will help transfer practices and solutions from one region to another and scale up deep-tech healthcare innovations based on two enablers: health data (accessible, ethical and interoperable) and advanced therapies medicinal products (ATMPs), a groundbreaking class of innovative medicines, such as gene therapy medicine, delivering targeted treatments and, ideally, curing diseases
ECIV will create the European Circular Innovation Valley, a lively "dance floor" where innovation stakeholders can connect to propose solutions to common challenges of the regions to achieve circularity in their main industrial value chains. The ultimate objective is to forge a joint vision and create truly interconnected interregional European ecosystems capable to deliver novel circular solutions for the market using a mission-oriented approach.
SYSTEMEU's goal is to reshape the future of innovation across five diverse European regions - Bavaria, Transylvania, Castilla y León, Tuzla Canton, and the Northern Region of Portugal. With SYSTEMEU, this groundbreaking alliance combines its resources and expertise to bridge innovation gaps, drive knowledge exchange, and champion inclusive progress in technology and society.