Portugal pays 900 euros a month for an idea, and shuts out the people already building

Today, 25 August, is the deadline for the third application window of StartUP Voucher Innovate 2025-2026, the IAPMEI scheme that funds young people to create their own job in technology-based sectors. The small print is worth reading, because it says a great deal about who Portugal has decided deserves support.

To qualify you must be under 30, hold a bachelor degree or higher, be a tax resident in one of the eligible regions and, above all, not be working, not be studying, not be in training and have no other income. Meet all of that and you receive a monthly grant of 900 euros across a nine-month programme, up to two grants per project, plus interim awards of 1,500 euros at the start of phases two and three and a final award of 2,000 euros once the company is actually incorporated. The only asset the applicant is required to bring is an idea.

The test is not merit, it is absence

Look at what is being measured here. Not the quality of execution. Not a track record of shipping. Not traction, revenue, customers or a product in the market. It is documentary proof that you are currently doing nothing.

A developer in Rio Maior who works, pays tax and builds a side project after hours cannot apply. A two-person studio in Leiria that already has payroll and wants to launch a new product cannot apply. A technician with ten years of hands-on experience and no degree cannot apply, however far along the idea is and however well the market has been tested. The system asks you to quit first.

That is not a paperwork detail. It is the working definition of merit that the Portuguese state has chosen: money goes to people with free time and a diploma, not to people with delivery behind them.

Ten per cent of the money depends on an outcome

Run the numbers on a maximum project envelope. Two grants of 900 euros over nine months come to 16,200 euros, plus two interim awards of 1,500 euros tied to moving between phases. The award that actually depends on a company existing at the end is 2,000 euros. Roughly ten per cent of the package is linked to the outcome. The other ninety per cent lands while the programme is still running.

The scheme own figures make the effect clear. Three previous editions supported more than 800 projects, and more than 250 companies came out of them, according to reporting by ECO. Presented as a headline that reads well, and as a training exercise it may well be. Read the other way round, roughly two in every three funded projects never became a company. No clawback, no consequence, no penalty.

A programme where failing costs the same as succeeding is not selecting for success. It is selecting for the application form.

Paperwork versus practice

The issue is not public money backing risk. Backing risk is precisely what the state should do in an economy with thin private capital. The issue is backing risk without asking for any risk in return.

Anyone who has built something knows the price. Late nights, personal savings, clients who pay late, months where your own salary is the last one out. There is no support line designed for that person, because their employment status disqualifies them at the first filter. The application is judged on a document, and the document gets written by whoever has time to write it.

There is a geography problem too. This edition limits eligibility to tax residents in the North, Centre and Alentejo regions, which leaves much of the Ribatejo and Oeste area outside the map. Towns like Santarém, Caldas da Rainha and Rio Maior have local structures ready to host projects, including the municipal business and innovation centre in Rio Maior, accredited under the national incubation voucher scheme. Local infrastructure only counts for something if local people can reach the national instruments.

What backing the doers would look like

The alternatives are not hard to design. Repayable support that converts into a grant when milestones are hit and returns to the state when they are not. Tranches tied to verifiable evidence, with the bulk of the money on delivery rather than on kick-off. Eligibility that includes people in work, because building a business on top of a job is the most common and the healthiest way it happens in Portugal. And criteria that weigh proof of execution above formal qualifications.

For as long as the entry filter is unemployment plus a diploma, the country will keep funding intention and keep treating the people who produce as though they need nothing. Applications close today. It is worth asking who they ended up choosing. More detail on the scheme is available from the Portuguese government portal and from COMPETE2030, one of the funds behind it.