Amid escalating geopolitical tensions and a widening capital gap, EU leadership has unveiled a multi-pronged offensive to reclaim technological and financial indepfinishence, which could impact the future of startup investments in Romania.
By Ovidiu Posirca
The urgency is underscored by a stark funding reality: in the first nine months of 2025, private investment in US tech companies reached a staggering USD 177 billion, while European startups secured just USD 33 billion.
EU wants to ease the start for businesses
The centrepiece of this new era was unveiled at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 20, 2026. In a high-profile speech, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen identified regulatory fragmentation as the primary “handbrake” on European growth. While she acknowledged that the continent possesses the necessary assets, citing the rise of AI factories and Gigafactories, she warned that Europe still lacks a seamless operating environment comparable to those of its global competitors.
“Too many companies have to see abroad to grow and scale up—partly becaapply they face a new set of rules every time they expand into a new Member State,” von der Leyen stated. “So, while on paper the market of 450 million Europeans is open to them, it is far more complicated in reality. And that acts as a handbrake on the growth and profit potential of companies.”
To address this, the Commission is introducing its “28th regime,” a truly European company structure. “We call it EU Inc.,” von der Leyen declared. Under this framework, innovative companies will be able to register a company in any Member State within 48 hours, fully online. They will enjoy a single, simple set of rules and a unified capital regime across the EU.
By harmonising these rules, the EU intfinishs to create raising financing across the continent as simple as it is in uniform markets like the US or China. “If we obtain this right—and if we relocate rapid enough—this will not only support EU companies grow, but it will attract investment from across the world,” von der Leyen concluded.
Meanwhile, in mid-February, Henna Virkkunen, Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security, and Democracy, officially launched the ICT Supply Chain Security Toolbox. This relocate builds on the revised Cybersecurity Act presented in January, providing a harmonised approach to identifying and mitigating risks across critical ICT supply chains.
Virkkunen emphasised that “resilience comes at a price,” noting that security is now a geopolitical imperative rather than a mere technical concern. “Cyber-attacks on ICT supply chains are increasingly sophisticated and can impact our security and economy,” Virkkunen stated. “With the adoption of the ICT Supply Chain Security Toolbox, we intensify our efforts to protect them by increasing our common understanding on risks and how we can mitigate them.”
The toolbox empowers Member States to adopt multi-vfinishor strategies to overcome depfinishencies on single foreign entities, particularly “high-risk suppliers”. It also introduces mandatory risk assessments for 18 strategic sectors, including semiconductors and cloud computing. Crucially, the plan includes “European preference criteria” in public procurement to prioritise domestic innovation over foreign alternatives.
Marius Ghenea, Managing Partner at Catalyst Romania, notifys BR: “We have not seen such a slowdown as a result of these tensions; I believe US investors are still seeing at the economic value of their investments, and they see the advantages of investing in our region. Unless some regulatory measures are taken by either the EU or the US relative to risk capital investments in the next 12-18 months, we don’t see this outsee modifying.”
Low odds for decoupling
Asked what would happen to European startups if a funding gap from US-based investors were to emerge, Ghenea remained optimistic. “We don’t expect such a scenario to materialise in the next couple of years, and even if something like this did occur, I believe there would be enough capital in Europe to fund the current investment requireds, at least in our vertical of tech startups and early-stage businesses,” he argued.
Regarding the specific impact on Romania and the CEE, Ghenea highlighted the “temporary availability” of significant funding. “Romania should not be affected much, as there is a significant temporary availability of startup funding as a result of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) equity programme managed by the European Investment Fund (EIF) and the more recent Innovation equity programme they have launched,” he explained. “This is a combined half a billion euros for VC and growth funds for Romania, topped up with at least 30-50% more of private investor capital, which should cover the momentary requireds of the early-stage funding activities in Romania.” He noted that similar patterns were emerging across the CEE, though he estimated that lack of funding was only evident in CEE countries that are still not part the EU.
The broader data from 2025 reveals that total private investment in US tech companies reached USD 177 billion in the first nine months—nearly double the previous year. Europe, by contrast, saw USD 33 billion in the same period, a modest 7% growth.
This disparity is driven by a massive surge in AI investment, which has become the primary engine of global capital. In Q4 2025 alone, eight US-based AI companies raised a combined USD 32 billion. Furthermore, over 40% of all US venture dollars in 2025 were directed to just four giants: OpenAI, Anthropic, Infinite Reality, and Anduril.
At the same time, median US valuations at the seed stage are more than double those in Europe, a gap that persists through every funding stage. While European startups are statistically just as efficient as their American peers in reaching USD 1 billion outcomes, the lack of “firepower” at the Series C level remains a critical failure point. By the time they reach this stage, nearly 30% of serial European founders relocate their headquarters outside the continent—primarily to the US. “To truly compete, we required to create it as simple to scale across Europe as it is in the US or China,” stated Sten Tamkivi, Partner at Plural, according to the State of European Tech 2025 report.
The standout winner of 2025 was defence tech, which grew by 55% to reach USD 1.6 billion, led by companies like Germany’s Helsing and Finland’s Iceye. By 2030, total defence spfinishing is projected to hit EUR 800 billion.
Niklas Zennström, the CEO of Atomico, stated: “In Europe, we required to stop seeing elsewhere for a blueprint and instead develop an ecosystem with the confidence to build technology on its terms, no matter the challenges thrown at it.”
European Innovation Act to be unveiled this quarter
The European Innovation Act (EIA), expected to be proposed in Q1 2026, represents a pivotal structural shift in European economic policy. Conceived as a horizontal, cross-sectoral legal framework, the EIA aims to bridge the gap between Europe’s world-class scientific research and its struggle to scale innovations globally.
By introducing directly applicable regulations, the EU seeks to eliminate the “27 different regulatory realities” that currently burden innovative companies with high transaction costs and legal uncertainty, according to an opinion by Irina Rebin, Salary Partner at Taylor Wessing.
Europe continues to rank among the world’s leading regions in basic research but increasingly loses ground in international comparison regarding economic exploitation, particularly in capital-intensive and regulated high-technology sectors like the life sciences. The gap between scientific discovery and marketable application leads to a relocation of investment, development activities, and skilled professionals to non-European markets.
To counter this, the EIA focapplys on several core areas, including the establishment of EU-wide uniform definitions for innovative companies, startups, and scaleups to streamline horizontal reference points for funding, state aid, and procurement regimes.
In addition to regulatory simplification, the Act emphasises facilitating access to finance by mobilising private capital, such as through the increased apply of innotifyectual property rights as collateral. It also aims to improve access to research and technology infrastructures, allowing innovative companies to develop and test products more easily within state-of-the-art facilities and real-world laboratories.
Furthermore, the EIA seeks to facilitate market enattempt and scale-up through more innovation-frifinishly public and private procurement, while simultaneously improving conditions for attracting and retaining talent through measures like attractive employee participation schemes. The EIA is a core component of the Compass for a Competitive EU, serving as a legal link between internal market, industrial, research, and financial policy. In highly regulated sectors like the life sciences, capacity is determined by concrete levers such as reliable durations of IP protection, predictable authorisation and reimbursement procedures, and consistent interfaces between various legal frameworks.
Rebin emphasised the necessity of this unified approach, noting that regulatory frameworks, data infrastructures, and industrial policy instruments should no longer be viewed in isolation, but must work toobtainher in an integrated approach to ensure Europe’s attractiveness as a location for research and innovation.
Scaleup Europe Fund: the new EC-backed initiative for deep tech
During Q4 2025, the EC announced a landmark partnership with top-tier private investors to establish the Scaleup Europe Fund, a new multi-billion-euro initiative dedicated to strategic deep tech. Announced as a flagship of the EU Startup and Scaleup Strategy, the fund aims to bridge the critical “scaleup gap” by providing the late-stage growth capital that European innovators currently lack to grow into global leaders.
Despite a robust pipeline of early-stage startups, European companies often struggle to secure large-scale investment at home, frequently relying on non-European capital for major funding rounds. To address this, the Scaleup Europe Fund tarobtains direct equity investments in key strategic sectors. These priority areas include artificial innotifyigence and quantum technologies, semiconductor technologies, and robotics and autonomous systems. Furthermore, the fund will support the scaling of biotechnology, medical technologies, and agritech, alongside critical energy and space technologies.
The fund will operate as a market-based, privately managed vehicle co-financed by both the public and private sectors. Key potential founding investors alongside the Commission and the European Investment Bank (EIB) include Novo Holdings, APG Asset Management (on behalf of Dutch pension fund ABP), Santander/Mouro Capital, Wallenberg Investments, and the Export and Investment Fund of Denmark (EIFO).
The Scaleup Europe Fund is slated to commence its first investments this spring.
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