Does STEP hand out its own grants to space startups?

No — STEP has no funding pot of its own. It coordinates and tops up 11 existing EU programmes (Horizon Europe and the EIC, the Digital Europe Programme, the European Defence Fund and others), so a STEP-relevant project gets priority, a bigger ticket, or extra recognition inside those calls rather than through a separate STEP application.

What does the Sovereignty Seal actually do for a rejected proposal?

It doesn't release money by itself. The Sovereignty Seal (STEP Seal) is a quality label the Commission awards automatically to proposals that clear the excellence bar under a STEP-relevant call, funded or not — flagging the project to other EU programmes, national authorities and private investors as vetted and strategically important.

What is STEP?

STEP (Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform) is an EU mechanism, applicable since 1 March 2024 under Regulation (EU) 2024/795, that coordinates and tops up funding from 11 existing EU programmes for projects in critical technology sectors — rather than creating a new funding pot. Space sits explicitly inside its scope alongside digital, clean tech, biotech and defence technologies. Its visible feature for founders is the Sovereignty Seal: a quality label that flags excellent proposals to other funders even when the call that evaluated them can't pay.

Coordination, not new money

STEP doesn't run its own calls or hold its own budget line, with one exception. It channels resources through 11 EU programmes: five directly managed ones — Horizon Europe (home of the EIC), the Digital Europe Programme, the European Defence Fund, EU4Health and the Innovation Fund — plus six shared-management funds such as InvestEU, the Recovery and Resilience Facility and cohesion-policy funds. The one genuinely new sum is a €1.5 billion top-up added to the European Defence Fund; everything else is existing budget redirected toward STEP's priority sectors, originally digital & deep tech, clean & resource-efficient tech and biotechnologies, with defence technologies added since.

Space is named inside the critical-tech scope

STEP's published scope lists space technology explicitly: space-qualified semiconductors and quantum technologies, space-based PNT and satellite secure connectivity under the digital strand, and — under the defence strand — space situational awareness, protection of space assets, and space-based Earth observation and secure-communications services. In practice a founder doesn't "apply to STEP" — they apply to the underlying call, an EIC Accelerator Challenge, a Digital Europe topic or an EDF topic, that happens to carry STEP relevance.

The Sovereignty Seal and the EIC top-up

The clearest link to the EIC: applicants that clear the evaluation threshold but aren't funded already qualify for a Seal of Excellence; if they applied through an EIC Accelerator Challenge, they also receive a STEP Seal, extending that recognition toward STEP-relevant funders without a fresh application. Separately, EIC STEP Scale Up offers larger EIC Fund equity tickets — €10-30 million, against the EIC Accelerator's standard €1-10 million — for STEP-sector companies chasing bigger rounds targeted at €50-150 million total, with at least 3-5x the EIC's stake coming from other investors, and a €300 million budget for 2026.

Since STEP took effect, the Commission has launched 88 STEP-relevant calls and recognised more than 800 projects with the Sovereignty Seal, as of February 2026.

Official source: Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform; STEP Seal explained; EIC STEP Scale Up.

Written by Tymofiy Badikov, founder of VIRA.space (Virtual Innovation Research Assistant) — operated by Space Tech Gateway Sp. z o.o., Kraków Technology Park. VIRA tracks live European space funding calls and checks your eligibility free: see live tenders.