InvestEU supports most affected SMEs with 400 billion euros

The European Parliament, the European Council and the European Commission have agreed on a programme to support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) over the next seven years. This is the InvestEU programme which will mobilise over 400 million euros between 2021 and 2027 for Member States to support the SMEs most affected by the pandemic.

InvestEU aims to provide financial support to disadvantaged businesses in areas such as tourism and catering and aims to create and maintain quality jobs, respect the environment and contribute to competitiveness and productivity by increasing confidence in the future and in the EU.

The programme provides for the possibility for Member States to transfer, on a voluntary basis, amounts received through the Recovery and Resilience Mechanism to their national InvestEU compartment.

InvestEU will generate investment from a European guarantee of around 26 billion euros, through investment in sustainable infrastructure (9.9 billion euros), research, innovation and digitisation (6.6 billion euros and 25.1% of the guarantee), SMEs (6.9 billion euros) and social policies (2.8 billion euros).

The European guarantee should leverage 372 billion euros of investment. To this should be added 35-40 billion euros from the "re-use" of guarantees from existing financial instruments.

Source: Portugal 2020