General Information
Are you a credit institution? Are you a private investor (insurance company, investment fund, investment holding…?? Are you interested in investing in or lending more in or to the social sector? Then InvestEU can be a new option for you.
InvestEU is the follow-up programme to the Investment Plan for Europe. It will last from 2021 to 2024 and will support initiatives which promote EU top priorities: recovery, green growth, employment and well-being.
To achieve this, InvestEU works on three main areas:
- The InvestEU Fund: unlocking investment of over €372 billion over three years into European SMEs and infrastructure projects
- Advice and support: providing support to stakeholders through the InvestEu Advisory Hub and the InvestEU Portal
- Facilitating Legal Frameworks: supporting investment in the real economy
More information about the EU Investment Plan can be found here.
A key component of InvestEU is that it is demand-driven, meaning that project developers have to apply before receiving InvestEU support. Another key ingredient is that accessing InvestEU depends on the size of your project and financing needs.
InvestEU is composed of 3 main components:
1. InvestEU Fund
The Fund regroups the 13 financing instruments created under the 2014-2021 mandate. It will invest into the following 4 categories:
- Sustainable infrastructure (sustainable energy, digital connectivity, transport, the circular economy, water, waste…)
- Research, innovation and digitalisation (digitisation of industry, scaling up larger innovative companies, artificial intelligence …)
- Small and medium-sized companies, especially the ones affected by the Covid crisis)
- Social investment and skills (education, training, social housing, social innovation, healthcare, long-term care and accessibility, social enterprise, integration of vulnerable people…)
2. InvestEU Advisory Hub
The InvestEU Advisory is composed of:
- A central entry point for the provision of advisory support services and project development assistance for authorities and project promoters and financial or other intermediaries
- Advisory initiatives under the 4 InvestEU policy windows
This advisory hub will help you to:
- “Support the identification, preparation, development, structuring, procurement and implementation of investment projects
- Enhance the capacity of promoters and financial intermediaries to implement financing and investment operations
- Support awareness raising and preparatory activities for investment areas that show a clear market gap”
3. InvestEU Portal
The InvestEU Portal is the continuity of the European Investment Project Portal which aims to provide an easily accessible and user-friendly project database to promote the visibility of EU-based projects seeking financing and provides worldwide investors with information about investment opportunities
With the term financial intermediair(y)ies, the European Investment Bank means
- banks or credit institutions,
- investment funds,
- microcredit institutions,
- guarantee schemes,
- guarantee institutions,
- foundations,
- family offices,
- social investment funds
- or other institutions duly authorised to provide loans/guarantees or risk-sharing structures according to the applicable legislation.
This website aims at providing a general support, advice and guidance for private financers to use InvestEUor -more broadly- EIB financial support to invest in the social sector.
For larger projects: the InvestEU Portal is a database of projects to help investors find and access project developers throughout the world. The Portal publishes projects which are
- Worth at least €10 million
- Expected to start within 3 years of their submission to the EIPP
- Promoted by a public or private legal entity established in an EU country
- Compatible with all applicable EU and national laws.
The InvestEu Advisory Hub can provide support, advice and guidance for project developers who may require it to attract investors such as yourselves.
- A one-stop-shop for a variety of different advisory and technical assistance programs and initiatives for both public and private beneficiaries, provided by high-level experts
- A cooperation platform to exchange and share the expertise developed among the InvestEU partners and stakeholders
- An instrument to evaluate and address new needs by reinforcing or extending existing services provided by the InvestEU or creating news ones as demand arises
Investors can also contact the European Investment Bank directly for more information using this contact form..
In most cases, a InvestEU intervention would provide a better loan deal for your needs than many other options. This is a result of the fact that InvestEU reduces the risk for financial Intermediaries and the EIB to invest in your project by providing guarantees against a part of the possible losses.
It is however difficult to state with precision the advantages InvestEU and other EIB programmes may bring for your specific project given that your project would need to be analysed first. Such criteria would include matters such as income/revenue structures, sustainable business plans, good governance, et cetera.
The number of financial intermediaries demonstrates the benefits many private investors see for using InvestEU as a way to invest in new sectors, including the social sector. The Success Stories also show the benefits InvestEU could provide for your project plan.
