EFSI funds to support European Innovation
By Ingemar Pongratz
In a recent article published in Science|Business the European Commission has announced that the European Fund for Strategic Investment, also known as the Juncker Plan, will provide investment additional funds for European Industry and European Innovation. EFSI was established to provide funding to improve the investment climate in Europe by securing the collaboration between private and public funds. To establish EFSI the European Commission transferred funds from several sources such as the European Institute for Technology, the Connecting Europe facility and from the Horizon 2020 research and innovation funding scheme.
After a long and heated debate, the European Parliament and the European Council and the Commission agreed on a compromised and agreed that EFSI should be launched.
Now the European Commission has announced that EFSI will provide funding to European Industry through the InnovFin facility. InnovFin provides loans and guarantees to European Companies who need additional funding to implement new high risk projects and investments in areas that may otherwise have problems to attract funding form private sources.
Through the Juncker Plan the Comssion is moving away from the traditional grants toward supporting companies and projects through loans which will hopefully attract private investors as well.
In practical terms this will be accomplished by establishing several new InnovFin areas which will provide loans and / or capital againts equity in SME’s.
InnovFin will collaborate closely with the private sectors and combine private and public funds and fund projects in areas (projects) in the ICT sector, climate change, in the Health sector (Infectious diseases) for large, mid and small cap enterprises. It will be very interesting to follow the development of the InnovFin facility.
Ingemar Pongratz from Pongratz Consulting / Fenix Scientific AB is a EU funding consultant. We help companies, universities, and other organizations who want to apply for EU funding. If you are interested in contacting us please send us an message using the Online Contact Form or by email to:
Ingemar.Pongratz (a) Pongratzconsulting.com
Ingemar Pongratz Sodertorn 2015
