Catalyzing the EU’s Green Industrial Transformation (cepInput)

"In all three Member States studied, sufficient venture capital is lacking. In addition, governments are unwilling to reduce bureaucratic hurdles to accelerate start-ups," says cep expert Eleonora Poli, who analysed the respective start-up scenes with cep economists André Wolf, Anselm Küsters, Anna Meister and Victor Warhem.

The empirical basis is the evaluation of 61 German, 30 French and 14 Italian start-ups and their regulatory framework conditions. According to the study, most companies focus on alternative energy sources such as solar energy, clean agriculture, smart-home and smart-city technologies or the restructuring of the healthcare system. It is striking that most start-ups are located in only a few metropolitan areas, such as Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Paris and Milan.

"In the EU, there is no uniform definition of cleantech start-ups so far," says Wolf. According to Küsters, policymakers must harmonise national legal cleantech categories. Warhem criticises bureaucratic hurdles for cleantech start-ups in all three countries. While the scene in Germany is characterised by mostly very young companies, the companies in France and Italy are comparatively older.