What’s an IPCEI?

An Important Project of Common European interest is a specific possibility to find aid compatible with the internal market. In the past it was rarely used until 2014 when the European Commission revived this clause by adopting a dedicated Communication laying out the conditions for its application.

Important Aspects of IPCEIs:

  • Contribution to Union objective(s) and significant impact on competitiveness, sustainability, or value creation across the EU

  • Projects involving more than one Member State

  • Positive spill-over effects on internal market/union society; benefits not limited to participating Member States & companies

  • Co-financing by the beneficiary

  • In case of R&D&I, projects must be of a major innovative nature or of important added value in the light od the state of the art in the sector

  • First industrial deployment covered where it allows for the development of a new product with high R&D&I content or of a fundamentally innovative production process

Advantages of an IPCEI:

  • The existence of the market failure affecting the project can be presumed (under normal R&D&I aid rules, this needs to be proven for larger projects;

  • The project can be aided up to 100% of the funding gap on the basis of a large set of eligible costs (under normal regional aid and R&D&I aid rules. There are upper limits and the closer to the markets, the lower the caps;

  • Costs of first industrial deployment (i.e.: between pilot line and until start of mass production) are considered eligible.

IPCEIs are about disruptive and ambitious research and innovation, beyond the state of the art in the sector; followed by first industrial deployment, which is the short period where very important R&D&I is still necessary (e.g.: to scale up a pilot line); actions by beneficiaries to generate positive spill-over effects, throughout the EU, on the knowledge and results they generate in the IPCEI beyond their business as usual (quantitatively & qualitatively)

IPCEIs are NOT about

  • Support for mere building of production capacity, factories and mass production lines

  • Boosting the competitiveness of the aid beneficiaries

  • Vigilance, especially on FID, needed due to i.a. to potential anti-cohesion aspects, high distort potential, and WTO risks