European industry is being challenged by a number of factors: high inflation, labor shortages, disruptions in supply chains, rising interest rates, and spikes in energy costs and input prices.

Brussels has already unveiled several initiatives to support its industry, the most important and recent of which is the Green Deal Industrial Plan proposed in early February, the zero-emissions package for the competitiveness of European industry within which the idea of an embryonic form of a European sovereign wealth fund found a place.

The need for a more structural response to business investment needs led the Commission to launch STEP, in a sense the precursor