On Monday 6 July, the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the German biopharmaceutical company CureVac (see EUROPE 12507/28) signed a €75 million loan agreement to support the development and large-scale production of vaccines, particularly vaccines to combat Covid-19.
The money - which is slightly less than the €80 million initially announced by the European Commission (see EUROPE 12447/1) - will be granted in three tranches of €25 million.
The money will be raised through InnovFin, the Infectious Diseases Financing Facility (IDFF), which is a joint EIB and European Commission initiative established under the Horizon 2020 programme to support the fight against infectious diseases (see EUROPE 12468/8).
The loan will also support “the company's efforts to expand its current production capacity [...] and accelerate completion of its fourth production site in Tübingen, Germany”, said the parties involved.
Mariya Gabriel, the Commissioner for Innovation and Youth, welcomed the support given to CureVac and stated that, since the beginning of the pandemic, €400 million had been raised under the InnovFin facility (see EUROPE 12480/7) “to enable the EIB to handle a larger number of projects” related to Covid-19. (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)