Netherlands NIKI scheme: EUR 1.2 billion state aid for industrial decarbonisation

Mechanism

NIKI is a Dutch direct-grant scheme cleared by the European Commission under EU State aid rules (case SA.103901) on 20 May 2025, with a total budget of EUR 1.2 billion and a scheme end date of 31 December 2029. It is administered domestically by RVO (Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland), the executive agency of the Ministry of Economic Affairs. Eligible applicants are industrial enterprises of any size operating production facilities in the Netherlands under SBI code C (industry) or E (waste/wastewater management, subgroups 37 and 38.2). The distinctive feature of the scheme — and the reason the Commission's press release frames it as a first — is that it pits two project types against each other in one competitive tender: direct decarbonisation projects (e.g. electrification of production processes) and resource-efficiency/ circularity projects (substituting secondary or bio-based raw materials for primary/fossil-based ones). Projects are ranked and selected by lowest EUR-per-tonne-of-CO2-equivalent-abated requested, must achieve at least 100,000 tonnes of lifecycle GHG reduction, and must request a minimum of EUR 30 million in aid — a threshold that screens out all but large industrial investments. RVO opened and then closed a first application round (deadline 30 September 2025); a further round was expected in autumn 2025 as of scheme documentation.

Downstream implications

• Screens for large-scale industrial investment: the EUR 30 million

minimum-request floor concentrates the EUR 1.2 billion budget in a small number of major projects rather than spreading it across SMEs.

• Adds the Netherlands to the growing roster of EU member-state

industrial-decarbonisation subsidy schemes cleared under the Commission's post-2023 Temporary Crisis and Transition Framework (TCTF) state-aid rules, alongside comparable German, French and other national programmes.

• The direct-decarbonisation vs. circularity competitive-bidding design

is a template the Commission may point to for future member-state schemes.

Open questions

• Which specific companies/projects were awarded funding in the first

(now-closed) application round — not disclosed in the sources reviewed here.

• Whether the autumn 2025 second round opened as expected and on what

terms.