Scale-up of the Europe Startup Nations Alliance as a European Digital Infrastructure Consortium and a catalyst for a startup-friendly reform in Member States

ESNA has been created in 2022 with the vision of “becoming a leading Entity for the EU agenda for entrepreneurship and contribute to bring Europe to the lead of global startup ecosystem” and the mission to “support the signatory countries and provide concrete support to policy makers in implementing the best policy practices outlined in the EU Startup Nations Standard”.Two years on, and the organisation is clearly on the path to achieve both its vision and mission.

A formal entity has been created in Portugal to allow the start of activities, as a first-of-a-kind body which has grown in resources, skills and specially in adhesion of member states, counting today 19 countries as a strong and very representative majority of the signatory countries of the SNS, and with continued negotiations for the inclusion of further members.

In terms of activities, ESNA has initiated its pivotal role of monitoring of SNS adoption, with the launch of the SNS Scoreboard, first as a Baseline in 2022 and then as a first annual report in 2023, and the start of a new policy lab to support countries accelerating SNS implementation through best practice benchmarking, sharing and exchange.These ESNA initial activities have been pivotal in helping EU member states moving beyond the aspirations of the political declaration and into concrete implementation and benefiting from a strong participation of ESNA's signatory members, as demonstrated by the 91% response rate to the SNS Scoreboard 2023 inquiry.

But in spite of ESNA’s significant advancements in terms of Member State adhesion and activities, there is still a need for an evolution in terms of a legal framework which is better aligned with its truly European role, as well as consolidating the breadth of its activities, namely in the area of the SNS standards implementation monitoring and knowledge sharing, which are the core objectives being pursued through the current application.