In this week's episode I’m joined by Nina Meglič, director of ACT-SI – Association CleanTech Slovenia, project manager at a deep tech spin-out from the National Institute of Chemistry in Ljubljana, and part of the national contact point team for the STEP platform on strategic technologies. Nina works right where clean tech, EU funding and policy meet: helping build the Slovenian clean tech ecosystem, coordinating EU projects and supporting companies and policymakers. We start with the big picture: structural differences between Western and Central Eastern Europe, and how they show up very clearly in clean tech deployment, infrastructure, investor attitudes and the ability to decarbonise. EU grants – Horizon Europe, cohesion, the Innovation Fund, Just Transition – are absolutely central to R&D in Slovenia, but their design and the way projects are selected often put the region at a disadvantage. Nina walks through the Innovation Fund example, where Slovenia has only one funded project so far, and describes how complexity, lack of CCS infrastructure and missing national reforms make companies hesitate even to apply.

From there we zoom in on competition, AI and shifting priorities. Proposal numbers are exploding as AI speeds up writing; at the same time, Nina sees traces of AI in evaluation summary reports – sometimes with comments that clearly do not fit the technology. Budgets per project are shrinking, consortia are getting bigger, and access to powerful European partnerships is limited by high membership fees that small CEE organisations can’t afford. We talk about the structure of the Slovenian economy (99% SMEs), the lack of deep tech support infrastructure, and why investors often tell her spin-out “if you were in Germany, you’d be funded already”. Nina argues that cohesion and widening measures have helped but not fixed the divide, and calls for the next financial framework to acknowledge a two-speed Europe and adjust instruments accordingly – from widening for companies and policymakers to tougher trade rules and strategic support for raw materials and industrial capacity. The episode ends on a very human note: the undervalued, underfunded work of associations like ACT-SI, and why she still keeps going.

Time codes:

01:32 Guest introduction and fly in

10:32 Clean tech and EU funding reality in CEE

21:12 Competition, success rates, and inequality

33:49 Shifting EU priorities: defence, security, and AI

40:58 Impact on companies and innovation ecosystems

48:35 Advice and reflections

55:04 The toughest challenge