Event Highlights
Where Does the Stack Breaks?
Summer Meeting 2026
About The Event
Over two days in Brussels, the INESC Brussels HUB Summer Meeting 2026 brought together international and European policymakers, Portuguese authorities, representatives of the European Commission, research and technology organisations, universities, industry leaders, innovation actors and the wider INESC community to reflect on a central question for Europe’s future competitiveness:
How do we organise the full technology development continuum, from knowledge creation to industrial and societal capability?
Building on the discussions initiated during the Winter Meeting 2026 in Coimbra, this year’s Summer Meeting explored where Europe’s technology stack breaks and what is needed under FP10 and the European Competitiveness Fund (ECF) to turn research excellence into competitive capability.
Day 1
We were honoured to count on the presence of Fernando Alexandre, Helena Canhão, João Rui Ferreira, Jakob Edler, Alexandr Hobza, Massimiliano Esposito, Eva Nussmueller, Carla Matias Dos Santos and many others whose contributions shaped the strategic reflections throughout Day 1. João Claro provided the overall provisional conclusions, anticipating a rich Summer Meeting 2026 report.
The quality and diversity of exchanges highlighted the importance of creating trusted spaces for strategic dialogue on Europe’s future research, innovation and competitiveness agenda. We would also like to extend our sincere thanks to our official Media Partner Science|Business and Simon Pickard for his support and excellent moderation during the Day 1 morning expert roundtable.
Day 2
Day 2 opened with a Plenary Session introduced by Ricardo Migueis, setting the scene for three Strategic Technology Windows examining Europe’s Clean Industrial Stack, Digital & Compute Stack, and Health Tech Stack, organised with the support of Manufuture ETF (European Technology Platform), EFFRA, Adra – AI-Data-Robotics-Association and the Innovative Health Initiative (IHI).
A sincere thank you to all speakers, moderators, rapporteurs, table hosts, partners and participants who helped make this edition of the Summer Meeting such a rich, constructive and thought-provoking experience.
The meeting concluded with a cross-domain synthesis plenary led by Inês Lynce, Paweł Świeboda and José Carlos Caldeira, bringing together reflections from the three Strategic Technology Windows and highlighting common challenges and opportunities across Europe’s technology development continuum.
The conversations may have concluded, but the work continues. Over the coming weeks, the insights gathered during the Summer Meeting will feed into a Policy Brief exploring how Europe can better organise the path from research excellence to competitive capability.
Thank you again to everyone who joined us and contributed to making this edition of the Summer Meeting such a rewarding and collaborative experience.
