Additional Support From European Fund for Strategic Investment to Horizon 2020 Venture Capital Facility

EUROPEAN COMMISSION, EUROPEAN INVESTMENT BANK (EIB) AND THE EUROPEAN INVESTMENT FUND (EIF) SIGNED AN AGGREMENT TO PROVIDE SUPPORT THAT WILL ENABLE THE EFSI TO ENHANCE HORIZON 2020 VENTURE CAPITAL FACILITY

An agreement signed by Carlos Moedas, Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, with the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Investment Fund (EIF) that will enable the EFSI to enhance existing loan guarantee instruments has been announced on the 22 July 2015 by the Commission. The agreement concerns the InnovFin SME Guarantee, a part of the new generation of financial instruments developed under Horizon 2020.

It is stated that "EFSI SME Window will enhance the Horizon 2020 InnovFin SME Guarantee instrument in several ways:

- it will significantly increase the currently available volume of financing to innovative SMEs by making immediately available €750 million initially planned for later commitments. The EIF will be able to enter into agreements with banks across the EU - such as have been recently concluded in France, Luxembourg, the UK or Italy - and to reach earlier the objective of €14 billion of supported investments

- in addition, EFSI will provide the EIF with the capacity to sign extra loans to innovative SMEs and small mid-caps amounts released from EFSI risk cover on InnovFin SME Guarantee will be redeployed to benefit SMEs. At least €420 million will be used to increase budgets available for InnovFin debt and equity products

• - new products with an EFSI guarantee of around €900 million in total will further increase investments in innovative SMEs and small mid-caps"