The Wennink report spotlights a real bottleneck for accelerating
growth. Promising Dutch start‑ups and scale‑ups are
often shut out of public support. In this first article from our
series on the Wennink report, we unpack why EU‑level changes
are required and what can be done nationally.
The challenge
The Netherlands is home to more than 8,500 start‑ups and
scale‑ups. For these companies, it is often a rational and
necessary part of reaching commercial viability to operate at a
loss during their build‑out phase. Those losses, however, can
trigger the “undertaking in difficulty” (UID) label
under EU State aid rules, which then bars Member States from
providing public support to those companies.
