2026 EU|BIC Impact Report

Building for Scale

The regional infrastructure for European startup and scale-up internationalisation

European startups internationalise at a lower rate than their counterparts in other leading innovation economies. The numbers tell a story. Europe creates more tech startups each year than the United States, around 15,200 against 13,700. But the pipeline does not hold. The EU accounts for only 8% of the world’s scale-ups, against 60% in North America. Seven in ten European SMEs operated only in their home country in 2024. Just 26% exported to other EU countries. Only 10% exported outside the EU entirely.

The barriers to growth and internationalisation are well identified.^[1] Most are structural. Some yield to the right kind of support applied close to where companies operate. Research on the effectiveness of internationalisation support confirms that providing close support to companies, preferably at a regional or even local level, is the factor most consistently linked to impact. Companies that received structured regional support for internationalisation grew foreign sales measurably faster than matched peers who did not.

EU|BICs, certified Business and Innovation Centres operating to quality standards upheld by the European Business and Innovation Centre Network (EBN), are built around that proximity. There are more than 110 quality-certified EU|BICs across 24 countries. They operate regionally, forming long-term relationships that serve companies across their full development span.

Internationalisation begins long before a company crosses a border. This report documents what EU|BICs do in supporting companies built to scale. The first is starting the right company: creating founders and turning research into businesses. The second is building credibility: connecting companies to the corporate partners and institutional frameworks that enable and accelerate growth. The third is funding: making companies investable and, sometimes, investing in them directly. The fourth is crossing borders: the structured support that reduces the cost, complexity and uncertainty of entering a new market.

The stories in the report below come from EU|BICs in Ireland, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Austria, the Netherlands, Spain and China. They cover health technology and defence, software and sustainability, Latin American companies entering Europe and European companies entering China. What they share is this: a company’s journey to international markets is best accomplished when regions operate together to support it.

^[1] Among them: regulatory fragmentation, limited risk finance, under-exploited commercialisation of intellectual property, insufficient use of public procurement as an innovation tool, complex talent and employment frameworks, and the absence of a genuinely unified single market.