EU INNOVATION STRATEGIES FOR TECHNOLOGY ENTREPRENEURSHIP: PLANNED VERSUS ACTUAL FUNDING IN HORIZON 2020 / HORIZON EUROPE AND THE POSITION OF UKRAINE

Technology-based start-ups face high technological risk and a persistent shortage of growth capital. Since June 2022 Ukraine has been associated with Horizon Europe, which makes the alignment of national and European support tools a practical question for post-war recovery. The purpose of the study is to test whether the declared EU priorities for technology entrepreneurship match the actual allocation of funds in Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe, and to define the position of Ukraine within this system. The analysis uses the complete CORDIS records of both programmes (about 59 thousand projects and 325 thousand participations) and combines a comparison of planned and achieved SME targets, concentration measures including the Herfindahl-Hirschman index, firm-level tracking between instruments, classification of technology domains and k-means clustering of the EU-27 verified with Ward's method. The EU meets the formal SME targets of Horizon 2020, while the overall SME share of funding remains stable at about one sixth. The replacement of the SME Instrument by the EIC Accelerator was accompanied by a moderate shift towards fewer and larger awards that blend grants with equity, a higher concentration of funds in countries with strong deep-tech ecosystems and weak continuity between the instruments. Public money moves towards medical, bio-, semiconductor and quantum technologies, whereas private venture capital flows mainly into artificial intelligence and defence. Ukrainian participation in Horizon Europe has doubled, but business involvement as project leader depends on dedicated calls. The novelty of the study lies in a full-data comparison of declared EU SME targets with actual allocations in two framework programmes, a phase-adjusted assessment of concentration and continuity in the transition from the SME Instrument to the EIC Accelerator, a typology of EU-27 countries by business participation and a quantitative assessment of Ukrainian business participation that isolates the effect of the dedicated EIC call. Policy directions for Ukraine are proposed: preparing firms for open EIC calls, combining grants with private co-investment and aligning national priorities with EIC domains.