Europe's investment in raw and advanced materials research has delivered real returns. Patent applications match the US and China, the innovation pipeline is deep, and programmes from Horizon Europe to the EIC have produced genuine breakthroughs across extraction, processing, recycling and advanced materials. But research excellence alone does not win the competitiveness race.  

As President von der Leyen has noted, Europe is roughly as good as the US at creating start-ups — and significantly worse at scaling them. The challenge is no longer generating the ideas; it is building the full value chain infrastructure — the pilot facilities, the offtake agreements, the patient capital, and the industrial partnerships — that turn promising technology into sovereign production capacity. In a fragmenting global trade landscape, where the US and China are investing at a speed and scale that dwarfs European instruments, the question is not whether Europe's innovation soil is fertile, but whether the conditions exist to grow a complete industrial ecosystem from it. This session brings together research institutions, deep-tech innovators, open innovation hubs, and industry to define what it will take to move from Europe's proven innovation strengths to the full-chain value creation that genuine strategic autonomy demands.