FAQ

Enterprise Europe Network helps European companies innovate and internationalise free-of-charge. It provides advice and services to help you grow internationally and take on the challenges of the single market. It helps you find partners and assists you with your innovation projects. The network, established in more than 60 countries around the world, brings together 3,000 experts from more than 600 member organisations. It’s the largest support network for SMEs in the world.

hub.brussels and Beci, the Brussels Chamber of Commerce, host Enterprise Europe Network Brussels. They provide SMEs and economic and academic players based in the Brussels-Capital Region with advisory and support services for internationalisation and innovation.

Our services are reserved for entities based in the Brussels-Capital Region who have both the will AND the ability to internationalise and innovate. In Belgium, Enterprise Europe Network is present in all three regions.

Our primary focus is on helping SMEs as defined by the European Commission. We can also support academic actors planning to set up a spin-off or other exploitation mechanisms of research results.

Moreover, other actors providing relevant opportunities for SMEs are welcome to contact us. In particular, as a large enterprise you can benefit from our services to find foreign SMEs willing to answer you technology request or challenges through the partnership database, brokerage events, company missions or open innovation events or initiatives organised by the Network.

The Enterprise Europe Brussels helps Brussels-based businesses innovate and grow internationally. This means that our services are targeted at enterprises which have the will AND the capacity to add a European/international dimension to their business strategy and to develop new products, services, processes, business models. The best moment to contact us is when you have agreed internally on a strategy for innovation and/or internationalisation, or are planning it.

“Internationalisation” does not only mean opening subsidiary abroad or exporting. You can also look abroad or learn from European peers to find innovation or partners to solve your current problems at home. Here we can help you!

Should you have just started your business this may not be the best moment to contact us. Opportunities for EU funding for starters are extremely limited to highly innovative and risky projects (see below).  Rather concentrate on getting your project up and running to full speed and the 1819.brussels is here to help!

Our team of experts can shed light on:

• The best strategy for international development through technological collaboration, collaborative innovation and R&D
• How to find the technology you need to innovate in your business line or position your innovative solutions/products in a new industry niche or new geographical market
• How to improve your ability to internationalise successfully
• The most effective approach for scaling up your start-up
• The most suitable financing source for your R&D and European competitiveness projects (Horizon Europe, Single Market Programme)
• The most suitable way to finance your growth
• How to improve the growth of your business or better manage your innovation processes to improve your performance and achieve sustainable growth
• How to manage and harness your intellectual property at the international level
• How to increase your economic, environmental and social resilience
• How to gain competitiveness with the digitalization of your business

HOW DOES IT WORK?

1. Get in touch with our team:
2. Express your needs with regards to your internationalisation strategy
3. We provide you with the information you are looking for and advice relating to the strategy or
4. We point you to the Brussels ecosystem which is best suited to you
5. Let’s design together a tailor-made action plan
   If the network is the right service for you, we will:
6. agree on an action plan with you for implementing internationalisation activities
7. assist you in defining and implementing the action plan, making optimal use of opportunities, methods, tools and services
8. Execute your action plan
   We support your company throughout its development. Our goal is to ensure that you meet your objectives and that your company becomes as competitive, resilient and empowered as possible, by creating and contributing good leads.

All Enterprise Europe Brussels’ services are free of charge since they are co-funded on the one hand, by the European Commission and on the other hand, by the regional authorities or the organisation hosting these services. In Brussels, these organisations are hub.brussels and BECI.

Please note that some organisers of Enterprise Europe Network matchmaking events around Europe may ask registration fees to take part in the event and the related programme/package they propose.

The co-funding from the European Commission and the Brussels-Capital Region is public money – including taxes you and you company have already paid – whose use must be systematically justified.

Services deployed by Network advisors are built around a customised and unique approach designed as an action plan agreed upon by you as a company and your dedicated Network advisor.

Your advisor is engaged in deploying all necessary efforts to reach the purpose (obligation of means, not of results). You should commit to provide information on the results and follow-up of the advices and contacts provided by your advisor.

Our expertise is in supporting internationalisation and/or innovation in relation with the Single Market. For other questions outside our scope, we have a no-wrong-door policy and we will do our best to help you find orientation and signpost you to the right person in the regional ecosystem.

Regarding our main scope, we can NOT

• Provide legal advice (we are not lawyers) ;
• Advise a specific consultant ;
• Write a project proposal for you ;
• Substitute for existing national /regional contacts points for EU funding projects;
• Be your commercial agent for marketing purpose

Do your work, on the contrary we do believe in co-creating with you an action plan tailored to your needs!

Your Network advisors collaborate closely with the Economic and Commercial Attaché (ECA, AEC in French). We strive to foster synergies.

Contact your Network advisor to find an innovative or tech solution, to valorise your R&D results and products and services. .

For commercial partnerships, it can in fact be useful to contact both for complementary support, as the Enterprise Europe Network is not covering the entire world.

The Network advisers from hub.brussels can help answer your question on EU R&DI funding schemes (e.g. Horizon Europe, Digital Europe Programme, Eurostars, LIFE, EIT KICs and several European Partnerships). Regarding Horizon Europe, most of Network advisers from hub.brussels are also National Contact Points for Horizon Europe or they will redirect you to the relevant NCPs.

The Network advisers from BECI can help you regarding non-R&DI EU funding.

In any case, we are not going to substitute for existing national /regional contacts points for EU funding projects but we can answer basic questions and put you in contact with the relevant contact points.

You should first understand the general requirements for European funding explain in this article, in particular :

The European Union funds European projects, most of them with transnational consortia;

Fundings for SMEs applying alone are very limited and extremely demanding;

EU funds require capabilities and resources to manage them.

Therefore looking for EU funding when starting a business may not be the right option, except if you have an highly innovative and risk project.

Should you have just started your business this may not be the best moment to contact us. Rather concentrate on getting your project up and running to full speed and the 1819.brussels is here to help!