From ambition to Infrastructure
In her State of the Union Speech on September 10th, 2025, Ursula von der Leyen stressed that “Europe’s independence will depend on its ability to compete in today's turbulent times.” Independence here is not abstract: it means building the capacity to develop, test, and scale technologies within Europe. This is where Testing and Experimentation Facilities (TEFs) come in — as one of Europe’s critical infrastructures and sites for competitiveness, technological sovereignty, and economic resilience. TEFs guarantee that European innovation responds to our challenging times with robust and trustworthy technological solutions, ensuring Europe remains at the forefront of innovation while keeping people at the centre.
TEFs make Europe competitive from within
Von der Leyen’s priorities — from investing in clean and digital technologies to backing AI, quantum and biotech scaleups, cutting red tape, and securing sovereignty through research and innovation — all find their practical expression in Testing and Experimentation Facilities. TEFs provide the safe and reliable environments that startups and scaleups need to validate technologies in real-world conditions. Thus, accelerating time-to-market and supporting European innovators to scale within Europe. By keeping and fostering testing and validation infrastructures in Europe, the AI sectorial TEFs safeguard intellectual property, and strengthen the EU’s capacity to set global standards. More than financial support, sovereignty depends on controlling the places where technologies are built, tested, and certified — and sectoral TEFs anchor those critical stages firmly across Europe. In doing so, they amplify the impact of EU programmes such as the Digital Europe Programme, Horizon Europe, the Competitiveness Fund, and the forthcoming Scaleup Europe Fund, ensuring that public investment translates into investible, scalable, and globally competitive European companies.
Why TEFs matter for Europe’s future
Europe’s competitiveness and independence will not be won by ideas alone, but by physical and virtual spaces that enable innovators to test, experiment, and scale safely within the Single Market. AI Sectoral TEFs are Europe’s competitive edge: they keep jobs, skills, and know-how at home, while building the trust and reliability that citizens and markets demand. In her address, President von der Leyen underscored the pivotal role of the AI Act, which she framed as Europe’s assurance that artificial intelligence will serve its people, uphold its values, and reinforce its sovereignty. She affirmed that through this landmark regulation, Europe is not simply responding to global AI trends—it is proactively shaping them, creating safe, transparent, and ethically grounded AI systems. This is why Testing and Experimentation Facilities (TEFs) are critical in bringing the AI Act’s ambitions to life: offering controlled environments where companies can validate their AI systems against European standards, ensuring compliance before deployment, and building the trust needed for widespread adoption across the Single Market. These efforts between AIsectoral TEFs and the entire European AI Innovation Ecosystem will be coordinated by CoordinaTEF.
Curious to test your solutions in a real-world environment? Check-out the Success Stories of our sectoral TEFs or visit their Catalogue of Services
