Aid to “Activa Startups” companies, within the framework of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.

Published in the BOE 12/22/2021:Order ICT/1426/2021, of December 14, which establishes the regulatory bases for the granting of aid aimed at promoting innovation through the initiative «Activate Startups», within the framework of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.

The Council of Ministers approved the referral to the Cortes Generales of the Bill to promote the ecosystem of emerging companies, better known as Startup Law, with which Spain is positioned at the forefront of Europe in supporting the ecosystem of innovative technology-based companies, attracting investment and talent.

With this Bill, the Government adapts the applicable framework to the specificities of startups, in the administrative, fiscal, civil and commercial sphere, in order to support them throughout their life cycle, particularly in their early stages. . To this end, it promotes the creation and growth of innovative, high-growth digital-based emerging companies and reinforces measures to attract international talent and investors, responding to the uniqueness of this type of company and the main demands of the sector.

The Startup Law is one of the milestones planned in the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan. The Bill allows Spain to align itself with the most attractive countries in the European environment for attracting investment, entrepreneurship and talent. Likewise, it responds to the recently signed standards of the EU Startups Nations Standard declaration: a set of practices designed to promote entrepreneurship in the European Union and encourage the creation of new innovative companies, generating the conditions to favor their scalability.

This Bill is accompanied by various measures implemented by the Government to promote the financing of startups in Spain, among which the ICO Next Tech Fund stands out, whose investment objective is to reach 4,000 million euros, designed to financially support companies in the growth phase. And the ENISA financing line, which has 51 million euros, aimed at the creation of startups led by women, which aims to reduce the gender gap in the field of innovative entrepreneurship.

Likewise, this Bill is framed within the structural reforms of the Recovery Plan aimed at improving business demographics and improving the business climate, in a complementary manner with the Create and Grow Law Project recently adopted by the Government and the Bankruptcy Reform Law, currently in the process of finalization.

Startup identification, basis for promoting the emerging business ecosystem

The Bill defines the concept of startup and addresses newly created companies or companies less than 5 years old (7 years in the case of companies in biotechnology, energy, industrial and other strategic sectors or that have developed their own technology designed entirely in Spain), independent of other companies, which are not listed on a stock market, do not distribute or have distributed profits, are innovative in nature and have an annual turnover of up to 5 million euros.

A single window is also established, the National SME Innovation Company (ENISA), which will grant the declaration of the innovative nature of the company so that it can benefit from the benefits introduced by the bill.

The Entrepreneurship Attention Points (PAE) and the National Entrepreneurship Office (ONE) will act as information points on support measures and aid, with the support of a reference web portal in Spanish and English.