European Startup Nation Alliance is at the Pavilhão de Portugal with 1.5 million a year – Technologies
With a very light structure, – “about ten people”, said Pedro Siza Vieira this morning, at a press conference at the Web Summit, – the European Startup Nation Alliance (ESNA) will be based at the Pavilhão de Portugal, in Lisbon, and will cost the State’s coffers 1.5 million euros a year, coming directly from the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR). In addition to this amount, the Government will still have an extra 500 thousand euros, from the European Horizon program.
The amount will go mainly towards structure costs, ESNA – officially launched this morning on the main stage of the Web Summit – will create a European database on startups, scaleups and unicorns. “We are evaluating the information and aligning policies according to the tools that we are taking out”; explained the Portuguese Minister of Economy.
ESNA was proposed by the Government during the Portuguese Presidency of the Council of the European Union and its mission is to create a political alliance between the Member States (plus Iceland) so that entrepreneurs can take advantage of the full potential of the European single market. “We have more startups than the United States, but as our startups they face a lot more difficulties”, commented Siza Vieira on stage. Based on eight principles, the agreement – with no initiative yet publicly scheduled – tries to seek best practices at the global level, with regard to supporting companies, in all their development stages, including no capitalization effort .
ESNA will be fully operational later this year and the Portuguese government will soon launch a tender to find a leader for the structure. The biggest objective is to double the number of unicorns (companies valued at more than one billion euros) in Europe, but also to increase the number of startups per capita and the share of women in entrepreneurship.
In addition to Pedro Siza Vieira, representatives from other Member States were on stage for the launch of ESNA – each one will have its own budget with the amounts they want to allocate to the initiative – such as Spain, Belgium and the Czech Republic and also from the Commission European