Brussels, 06/06/2001 (Agence Europe) - Commissioner Philippe Busquin and the president of the European Investment Bank (EIB), Philippe Maystadt, are to sign, on Thursday in Brussels, a cooperation agreement aimed at making investment in research and technological innovation in Europe more dynamic. The agreement must best serve to combine the actions and financing of the framework programme on research with the EIB loan possibilities and those of its venture capital fund, the EIF. With the building of the European Research Area, it meets a real demand on the part of research actors for a diversified portfolio of financial methods comprising subsidies, loans and venture capital.
The memorandum between the Commission and the EIB provides for: - the creation of a joint pilot group; - the diffusion to potential beneficiaries of information on respective instruments; - exchange of regular information and periodic high level meetings held before the spring European Council to assess results and identify new guidelines for strengthening this cooperation. Combined actions will mainly concern: (1) research projects and exploitation of results of these projects; (2) research infrastructures; (3) the provision of venture capital to start ups and high tech companies. In concrete terms, it is mainly a matter of allowing research centres and enterprises (mainly SMEs) to benefit from support for a research project, via the framework programme, and EIB intervention for the financing of infrastructures, which cannot be assured under the framework programme. This will also allow the EIB in certain cases and mainly during the transition from the research phase to that of development and exploitation, to take over the relay from the framework programme. As far as infrastructures are concerned, the EIB could above all contribute: - to the development of interconnection and the increased Internet flow in the context of the "Giant" project; - the creation of a major infrastructure for climatic modelling; - and the financing of large gene libraries, such as the European Institute on Bio-Information or EMMA. We recall that the financial allocation for the 6th framework programme for research (2002-2006) is EUR 17.5 billion. The EIB has, for three years (2000-2003) in the context of its Innovation 2000 initiative, a budget of EUR 12-15 billion for granting loans, to which must be added 1 billion for venture capital operations.