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Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises are the backbone of the European economy

They are major contributors to innovation, growth, employment, economic development and social cohesion. To realise their full poten-tial they need adequate access to finance. The European Investment Fund (EIF), as Europe’s leading de-veloper of risk financing for entrepre-neurship and innovation, has been established to provide this access.

EIF delivers a wide range of inno-vative financing solutions for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs 1 ) throughout Europe. These solutions, including equity, guaran-tees, credit enhancement and mi-crofinance, are delivered through financial intermediaries. Constantly adapting to changing market needs, EIF plays a countercyclical role in times of economic crisis.

Our objective is to support EU poli-cy objectives especially in the fields

of innovation, technology, growth, employment, entrepreneurship and regional development, while at the same time acting as a market-ori-ented organisation which achieves an appropriate return on its capital through commercial pricing and a good balance of fee and risk-based income.

EIF has a unique tripartite share-holding structure combining public and private investors: the European Investment Bank (EIB), 62%, the European Union through the Euro-pean Commission (EC), 30%, and 25 public and private financial in-stitutions, 8%.

EIF provides equity and debt throughout the value chain of en-terprise creation from the earliest stages of intellectual property de-velopment through to mid and later growth stages.

1  An SME according to the EU definition is a business with fewer than 250 employees that has a turnover of up to EUR 50m and a balance sheet total of up to EUR 43m.