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The European Union formalised in 2024 the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) as a strategic response to global competition and supply chain vulnerabilities. More than an isolated fund, STEP functions as a coordination platform that simplifies access to financial resources from 11 existing programmes to protect Europe's technological sovereignty.
For Portugal, this initiative translates into a historic opportunity for industrial reinforcement, with the transfer of approximately 1.1 billion euros of Portugal 2030 cohesion funds to projects in critical technologies. Through the new STEP Seal of Sovereignty, national companies — from SMEs to large enterprises — can access unique conditions, such as increased co-financing rates and facilitated access to funds without new complex technical evaluations.
In this article, we explore how STEP supports industrialisation in vital sectors such as Digital, Clean Technologies, Biotechnology, and Defence, and how your company can obtain this quality seal to lead the value chains of the future.
Table of contents
The Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) is a transversal European Union initiative designed to respond to the challenges of global competition and supply chain vulnerabilities. Formalised in 2024, STEP should not be interpreted as a new isolated vertical fund, but rather as a strategic coordination and labelling platform that operates over 11 existing funding programmes.
The operation of STEP is based on the reorientation and simplification of access to financial resources totalling billions of euros. Its role is to identify, support, and "seal" projects that develop or manufacture critical technologies in high-complexity sectors.
By integrating programmes such as Horizon Europe, the Innovation Fund, and cohesion funds (such as Portugal 2030), the platform allows for:
The creation of the platform emerges as a strategic and robust response to the Green Deal Industrial Plan, the EU's roadmap to ensure that the climate transition does not result in the deindustrialisation of the continent to the benefit of third markets. In a context where global powers implement massive subsidy packages (such as the US Inflation Reduction Act), STEP functions as the indispensable financial arm that sustains and enables the execution of structural regulations, namely the Net-Zero Industry Act (NZIA) and the Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA).
In practical terms, STEP ensures that Europe maintains its technological sovereignty in vital areas, preventing shortages of critical components, such as advanced semiconductors or active materials for batteries, from paralysing the European economy. Beyond injecting capital, the platform acts to mitigate investment risk, incentivising the development of integrated value chains ranging from the sustainable extraction of critical raw materials to the manufacturing of cutting-edge technologies. This holistic approach is fundamental to bridging the skills gap, ensuring that the European workforce is prepared to lead the deep-tech and clean-tech industries, protecting the single market against geopolitical volatility and guaranteeing long-term economic resilience.
The ambition of the STEP platform is to consolidate Europe as a self-sufficient industrial innovation hub. Its general objective is to drive massive investments in disruptive technologies, protecting supply chains and promoting technological sovereignty in the face of fierce global competition from powers such as the USA and China.
To operationalise this vision, STEP focuses on three fundamental specific objectives that guide funding and support actions:
STEP directs its resources to four fundamental sectors where the European Union's technological sovereignty is considered critical. These sectors were defined based on their potential to alter markets and the need to reduce strategic dependencies.
Applications:
Semiconductor chips, autonomous industrial systems.
Solid-state batteries, hydrogen valleys.
mRNA vaccines, CRISPR gene editing.
Autonomous drones, encrypted communications.
Eligibility in these sectors is not limited only to the final product, but covers the entire value chain, including the manufacturing of specific machinery, critical components, and the sustainable extraction of the raw materials necessary for the development of these technologies.
The operationalisation of STEP is based on mechanisms of transparency and certification of excellence that allow investors and promoters to quickly identify the best funding opportunities in the European Union.
STEP functions as an intelligent coordination system. Instead of centralising all capital in a single window, the platform uses "windows of opportunity" within 11 existing programmes. The operational process is facilitated by the STEP Portal, launched in September 2024, which acts as the digital entry point for the whole ecosystem.
This portal serves three fundamental functions:
The process begins when a project is submitted to a European call. If the project demonstrates a direct contribution to European strategic autonomy and achieves a high level of technical merit, it can be "labelled" as a STEP project through the portal, gaining visibility and facilitating access to alternative or increased funding sources.
The STEP Sovereignty Seal is a prestigious quality label awarded by the European Commission. It functions as a certification that the project is of high quality and contributes significantly to the EU's sovereignty objectives. This seal acts as a funding facilitator ("Quality Label"), allowing excellent projects, which may not have had immediate budget in the originating programme, to be financed by national or regional cohesion funds with more favourable conditions.
For a project to be awarded this sovereignty label, it must meet rigorous quality and impact requirements:
Although both are quality certificates for projects that have passed the evaluation thresholds in European programmes, there are fundamental distinctions:
The implementation of the STEP Platform in Portugal does not constitute an autonomous programme, but rather a "strategic label" integrated into the Portugal 2030 support instruments. This articulation allows resources from the European Structural Funds to be channelled to the technological domains of highest national and European added value.
In Portugal, STEP operates through a massive strategic reprogramming of the Portugal 2030 framework. Portugal decided to transfer approximately 1.1 billion euros from cohesion policy funds to specifically strengthen the national contribution to the STEP platform. This redirection of capital focuses on digital technologies, technological innovation, clean technologies, and biotechnology projects.
The practical implication of this is the opening of notices with higher budget allocations, such as STEP Productive Innovation (in the Digital, Biotechnology, and Energy areas). Furthermore, this manoeuvre allows for the application of special co-financing conditions and the inclusion of large companies as beneficiaries of this type of support.
This platform represents a historic opportunity for the Portuguese industrial fabric to position itself at the forefront of European sovereignty. With a reprogrammed allocation of over one billion euros, STEP with Portugal 2030 now offers unique financing conditions for projects of high technological complexity.
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