EU Sovereignty Finance: Mapping the STEP Platform’s €24 Billion Dual-Use Funding Infrastructure
In the aftermath of the EU’s 2025 defence readiness mandate, Europe has undertaken a substantive recalibration of its financial architecture, dismantling the long-standing separation between civil and military funding through the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform. By repurposing eleven existing programmes, STEP establishes a horizontal sovereignty window that enables regional, research and investment instruments to converge on high-priority dual-use and defence-relevant technologies. At the centre of this shift is the STEP Seal, which functions as a marker of strategic relevance and accelerates the mobilisation of both public and private capital. By late 2025, nearly €24 billion had already been channelled through this framework, addressing a structural financing gap that has historically constrained European deep-tech scale-up. The result is a funding environment in which grants, equity and guarantees are increasingly aligned within a single policy logic, extending scale-up capital to domains ranging from AI-enabled cybersecurity to operations in quantum-denied environments. For the European Defence Technological and Industrial Base, this represents a phase of industrial mobilisation without precedent at EU level. At the same time, the multi-instrument nature of STEP introduces layered compliance requirements and stringent sovereignty conditions that firms must internalise. Effective participation therefore depends on a precise understanding of how STEP mechanisms, including the scale-up schemes, intersect with national recovery and cohesion frameworks. A rigorous reading of the regulation is essential to identify where strategic priorities, public budgets and private investment now converge into durable industrial assets.