The Eurostars Programme is the first European funding and support programme to be specifically dedicated to research SMEs

Cofinanced by the European Commission (FP7) and 33 EUREKA Member States, it is committed to closing the gap between research and commercialisation by easing access to support and financing.
Currently, Eurostar project must be collaborative that means it must involve at least two participants, one of these being an innovative SME. It can address any technological area, but must be aimed at the development of a new product, process or service. After two years, the product must be launched in the market.

In the future programmation 2014-2020, two major changes are expected:
• The programme will be open to a wider range of entreprises: Currently the project was shaped around the leading SME which had to comply with a certain number of rules: a certain percentage of its staffs has to be dedicated to research and development. In the future programmation, Eurostars will still focus on Small and Medium sized enterprises but this particular rule will be adapted in order ease the participation of Medium Sized enterprises. This new criteria will benefit for SMEs in their later stage of growth and closest to the commercialisation. It will help it to better support the European manufacturing sector and encourage innovative SMEs to generate more employments.

• The EUROSTAR programme will also benefit from more financing: In the next programmation, the EUROSTAR programme will have a 1.14 billion euro budget (with 287 million coming from Horizon 2020 and 861 million coming from participating countries). This new investment represents an increase of more than 200% to the 2007-2013 period under FP7.