Quantum Technology, Quantum Policy

QOMPASS Consortium Urges Dedicated European Quantum Initiative

Avatar of Ivy Delaney
July 22, 2026 by Ivy Delaney

The QOMPASS consortium published a position paper on July 20, 2026, urging the European Commission to establish a dedicated European Quantum Initiative, a move coinciding with the review of “Horizon Europe – European Partnerships.” Recognizing Europe’s established scientific strength in quantum technology, QOMPASS argues the continent has reached a point where light-touch coordination is no longer sufficient for scaling up industrial deployment. The consortium proposes a new governance track within the Joint Undertaking architecture, backed by a specifically allocated budget, to foster alignment between the EU, member states, academia, and the private sector. This call is echoed by QuantERA, QuIC, and QCN, which also submitted position papers advocating for independent governance and a ring-fenced budget, signaling broad consensus on the need for a more robust approach.

QOMPASS, tasked with coordinating the Quantum Flagship, contends Europe must now translate scientific leadership into industrial strength, advocating for a dedicated European Quantum Initiative encompassing all quantum technologies. The forthcoming EU Quantum Act, according to the QOMPASS paper, provides the necessary legislative framework, and the European Commission’s partnership review represents the critical moment to finalize the initiative’s structure. QOMPASS outlines six guiding principles for this initiative, detailed in their full position paper, emphasizing the need for a robust and focused approach to secure Europe’s position in the rapidly evolving quantum field.

The current quantum technology ecosystem in Europe relies on collaborative projects like QuantERA, QuIC, and QCN, but a growing consensus suggests these arrangements require a more formalized structure to facilitate industrial scaling. This unified push coincides with the forthcoming EU Quantum Act, which provides legislative impetus for establishing a more structured approach; these coordinated efforts signal a shift from primarily research-focused funding towards a model prioritizing industrial competitiveness, with stakeholders seeking a dedicated initiative to cover all quantum technology areas within the Joint Undertaking architecture.

Stay current

See today’s quantum computing news on Quantum Zeitgeist for the latest breakthroughs in qubits, hardware, algorithms, and industry deals.

Tags:
Avatar of Ivy Delaney

Ivy Delaney

Ivy Delaney has been working with neural networks and machine learning since the mid-nineties, back when a couple of hidden layers and a long afternoon of training counted as ambitious. She has watched the field go from academic curiosity to the thing quietly running underneath everything, and she brings that long view to quantum computing. For Quantum Zeitgeist she covers the ground where the two fields meet. That means quantum machine learning and the variational algorithms it leans on, and it also means the less glamorous but more interesting story of classical machine learning already doing real work inside quantum machines, decoding error-correcting codes, calibrating noisy hardware and learning the error models that simulators depend on. She writes about the hardware those algorithms have to run on too, and about the post-quantum cryptography scramble that the same hardware has set off. Her stories typically start with the paper, whether that is peer-reviewed work, conference proceedings or an arXiv preprint, with the source linked so you can hold a claim up against the research it came from. She is unimpressed by benchmarks that will not say what they beat, and by demonstrations that only work in the press release.

Latest Posts by Ivy Delaney: