Regional Technological Capabilities and the Access to H2020 Funds

This contribution provides fresh evidence on the factors facilitating the access to H2020 funds by EU regions focusing on the role played by pre-existing technological endowments. The empirical analysis aims at assessing if, and the extent to which, the regional distribution of such resources strictly reflects the technological capabilities of regions (with the risk of a perpetuation or even a deepening of pre-existing technological gaps) or, alternatively, whether a rebalancing allocation mechanism (able to mitigate technological asymmetries) is at work. We show that an overall rebalancing effect of H2020 seems to dominate thanks to the ‘collaborative-inclusive logic’ of the Research and Innovation Actions (RIA) and the Innovation Actions (IA). The latter have been able to more than compensate the ‘elitarian’ nature of the other two pillars of H2020, namely the European Research Council (ERC) and the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions.