Supporting Agri-Food SMEs in Italy in the Post-COVID-19 Context: From Horizon 2020 to Horizon Europe

In recent decades, European policy has targeted specific measures towards SMEs. The recently concluded Horizon 2020 Programme, under the Europe 2020 Strategy, has provided economic support to stimulate competitiveness and boost the economy of member states by focusing on innovation. The SME Instrument, through a structure of multiple calls, constituted the vehicle for SMEs to access the funds made available by the European Union with disruptive innovation proposals. The initial structure of the SME Instrument, developed in phases and along the lines of the US Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Programme, was afterwards simplified in the design of its successor, the EIC Accelerator Pilot. The success of the above mentioned economic instruments led the European institutions to develop a new instrument, the EIC Accelerator, supported by the current Horizon Europe programme. After outlining the main features of this transition and the novelties introduced, this paper aims to ascertain the extent to which SMEs in the agri-food sector in Italy have had the ability and opportunity to intercept funds by measuring participation in the SME Instrument. Furthermore, it intends to verify which type of firms in the agri-food sector, divided into agricultural and industrial enterprises, intercepted more of the examined funds, and which organisational phase, productive or commercial, the enterprises have been oriented towards, also giving relevancy to the specific objects of the winning projects.