On 9 December 2024, the European Commission published the first list of projects that have been awarded a Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) Seal. The STEP Seal is a quality label which gives more visibility to promising projects in clean and resource-efficient tech, and deep and digital tech. This label aims at attracting additional EU public and private funding and support services. STEP Seals are awarded to all projects contributing to STEP objectives that meet the quality requirements in the calls for proposals under five programmes funded by the EU budget: Innovation Fund, Digital Europe Programme, European Defence Fund, EU4Health programme, and Horizon Europe.
The first 130 projects that were awarded the STEP Seal aim to develop cutting-edge clean technologies with a focus on energy and industry (Innovation Fund), and digital technologies for space-related applications (Horizon Europe/Space). Examples of breakthrough innovations include the development of components for offshore wind towers (Poland), first-of-a-kind sea freight service powered by hydrogen cells (Netherlands), manufacturing of photovoltaic modules (Italy), CO2 Capture for Storage technologies (Denmark) and radiation-resistant integrated circuits for in-space applications (multi-country).