On Friday 18 July in Copenhagen, ahead of the informal meeting of competitiveness ministers, Nadia Calviño, President of the European Investment Bank (EIB), announced the creation of ‘TechEU’, a one-stop shop providing innovators with a balanced financing package. This new programme, representing €4.25 billion in EIB financing, will mobilise around €18 billion in public and private investment for Europe’s future.
“We have launched a series of instruments that cover from idea to market the needs of Europe’s innovators for startups, scale ups and also growth companies”, explained Nadia Calviño. The aim is to “develop their new technologies in areas such as grid manufacturing components, wind manufacturing components, of course, bringing down energy prices, and finally disruptive technologies in the area of clean tech”.
The EIB’s loan and guarantee instruments are aimed at renewable energy producers, including small and medium-sized enterprises developing new green technologies. Projects aimed at expanding the European electrical grid to handle the significant influx of energy from clean energy sources can also benefit from these instruments. In addition, the EIB has decided to extend an existing programme for wind turbine manufacturers.
This initiative comes at a time when the European Commission has just announced the creation of the European Competitiveness Fund (ECF) (see other news). (Original version in French by Anne Damiani)