General Information
Are you a social service provider? Do you have Investment Plans? Are you looking for possible new ways to finance your social infrastructure plans and other projects? 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.
InvestEU Fund facilitates access to better loans by using EU money as a guarantee for private investors. It is also helping multiple regions and cities to get access to loans at a decent rate for their investment plans.
The InvestEU Fund is expected to represent 372 billion euros. Moreover, by partnering with the European Investment Bank (EIB) and other financial institutions, the EU will provide a budget guarantee of 26.2 billion euros to increase the risk bearing capacity.
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.
There are no specific limits to the type of social projects which can receive loans through InvestEU group, as long as it remains under national and European legislation.
Although this is a non-exhaustive list, possible projects could be for:
- Training and re-training of staff
- Innovative practices in service provision
- Social Housing
- Sheltered housing and independent & assisted living facilities
- Respite or day care centres
- Temporary care centres
- Digital care & support technologies;
- Inclusive education adaptations
- Inclusive employment adaptations
- Transport (vehicles, etc)
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.
