As part of the Coronavirus Response Investment Initiative (CRII), the Common Provisions Regulation 1303/2013 (CPR) has been amended to enable European Structural Investment Funds to be mobilised by Member States to respond to the outbreak.
The European Commission has adopted legislation to introduce a temporary framework to enable Member States to use the full flexibility foreseen under State aid rules to support the economy in the context of the COVID-19 outbreak.
The Temporary Framework includes a number of flexibilities that could be used to scale up and enhance existing ESIF financial instruments and/or set up new schemes to support EU businesses. These include amongst other things:
Financial instruments related to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) represent over half of the total ESIF funds committed to financial instruments in the 2014-2020 programming period. At the end of 2018, over EUR 17 billion of ESIF programme resources had been committed to support SMEs through financial instruments and this figure is expected to increase in the next programming period.
A new report has been published on the fi-compass website, which presents an analysis of the financing gaps and market failures relating to SME financing in each EU Member State. The report shows how, following the success of ESIF financial instruments in this sector during the 2014-2020 period, significant financing gaps nevertheless remain in all Member States for both debt and equity finance for businesses.
Interview with Jonathan Denness, Head of Financial Instruments and International Financial Institutions Relations Unit, DG REGIO, European Commission, and Frank Lee, Head of Financial Instruments Advisory Division, European Investment Bank, recorded at the FI Campus 2019 event, 4-5 December 2019 in Brussels.
Event page: https://www.fi-compass.eu/event/5506/fi-campus-2019-looking-ahead-2021-and-beyond
All managing authorities using European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) are required by Article 46 of the Common Provisions Regulation (CPR) to send to the European Commission a specific report covering their operations comprising ESIF financial instruments.
The updated annotated reporting template for ESIF financial instruments is available here on the fi-compass website.
This 2020 update of the annotated template for reporting on financial instruments according to Article 46 Common Provisions Regulation (CPR) includes instructions on how to fill-in the required and optional fields in the report on financial instruments (Section 8 in the annual implementation report to be submitted through the System for Fund Management in the European Union (SFC)).
The RegioStars Awards 2020 have been launched by the European Commission. Applications are invited from EU funded projects which demonstrate excellence and new approaches in regional development. fi-compass encourages you especially to submit to this competition examples of financial instruments under European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) and the projects they are supporting.
The audit methodology has the objective to assist the European Commission auditors and audit authorities (AAs) for their audits pursuant to Article 127 of Common Provisions Regulation (CPR). The methodology sets out the overall audit approach of the Commission services for carrying out audits of financial instruments in accordance with the applicable rules.
The European Commission’s ‘Audit methodology for auditing financial instruments 2014-2020’ is available here on the fi-compass website.
