9 September 2026 · First reading
The European Innovation Act has landed — what actually matters
The Commission has finally tabled its proposal, and my first reaction on reading COM(2026) 567 is that this is a more ambitious text than its sober title suggests. It does two very different things at once: it builds, for the first time, a dedicated legal framework for the public procurement of research and development — carving R&D out of the general procurement directives — and it plants the seeds of an EU market for intellectual-property-backed finance by giving new tasks to the EU Intellectual Property Office.
For innovative companies, the provision I would read first is the risk-and-benefit-sharing rule on intellectual property. Inverting the old reflex that the public buyer owns what it pays for, the default is that the contractor keeps its results, subject to access rights and public-interest safeguards. If that survives the legislative process intact, it changes the economics of selling R&D to the public sector in Europe.
For public buyers, the interesting shift is procedural: market consultation, competitive development in phases, multiple sourcing and value engineering are written into hard law, together with a genuinely developed set of security and cybersecurity obligations. This is procurement designed to buy innovation, not commodities.
None of this is settled. The delegated-act powers, the security and origin conditions, and the IP derogations are exactly the kind of provisions that Parliament and Council tend to reopen. My intention with this site is to follow those debates closely and to explain, in plain terms, what each change would mean for the organisations the Act is meant to serve.
— Anthony Bochon
