New financing instruments for SME in Europe
By Ingemar Pongratz
The European Commission has released information regarding the funding that is available for the final years of the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation scheme.
There are interesting news that we at Fenix Scientific AB / Pongratz Consulting will in the weeks to come. In fact there are very interesting news, for several sectors including New financing instruments for SME in Europe.
We have previously written that the European Commission is going to launch a new facility namely the European Innovation Council (EIC). The primary objective of the EIC is to provide support to European small business and European entrepreneurs that need support to push the innovation project forward towards the market.
The EIC will run as a pilot project in the final years of Horizon 2020 and will most likely be a central player in the future Framework programme FP9.
In Horizon 2020, the EIC will house two funding instruments already presented by the European Commission, namely the SME-Instrument and the Fast Track to Innovation schemes.
For these funding vehicles, the Commission has improved and simplified the application process by removing pre-defined themes. This mean that like the Fast Track to Innovation scheme, the SME-Instrument proposals will be completely bottom up which will allow entrepreneurs to freely submit their proposal for review.
This will likely lead to a substantial increase in the number of applications and even lower success rate.
Other, improvements include simpler application forms, increased pool of evaluators and the introduction of face to face meeting with selected applicants as part of the review process.
In addition, the EIC may include new funding possibilities for European entrepreneurs in the form of loans and / or risk capital from the European Investment Bank as part of their Access to Risk Finance scheme.
In fact, a new set of possibilities for European SME
Ingemar Pongratz is owner of Fenix Scientific AB / Pongratz Consulting. We provide support for organizations which are applying to European support from the Horizon 2020 scheme as well as other funding schemes. If you wish to contact us and discuss your needs please use the Online Contact Form (Opens in a new window) or send an email to:
Ingemar.Pongratz (a) pongratzconsulting.com
