A new initiative of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development (DG AGRI) and the European Investment Bank (EIB) encouraging the use of EAFRD financial instruments by EU Member States for rural infrastructure development and smart villages was launched during the ‘Fifth annual EU conference on European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) in 2014-2020’, which took place in Romania on 4-5 June 2019.

IFISE is the short title of the ‘Innovative Financial Instruments in support of the Social Economy’, a fi-compass Multi-region assistance (MRA) project. The project brought together four regions in Spain and Italy, Andalucia, Lombardy, Piedmont and Valencia to explore the potential of financial instruments under ESI Funds to enhance social impact activities.

FI Campus 2019, which will be held in Brussels on 4-5 December 2019, has been announced. This year’s theme for the flagship event of fi-compass is ‘Looking ahead to 2021 and beyond’. FI Campus 2019 will include a number of sessions aimed at helping fi-compass stakeholders prepare for the next programming period, which starts in January 2021.

In the focus – the new CPR and InvestEU

There is a new way to stay up to date with fi-compass content. Registered fi-compass users can now choose to follow content relating to one or more European Structural and Investment Funds (ERDF/CF, ESF, EAFRD, EMFF), as well as specific Member States’ Country Data pages.

The first of a new type of fi-compass event, ‘the fi-compass Knowledge Hub’, took place on 19 June 2019. This initial pilot event was held in Brussels on the subject of ‘State aid and financial instruments to support SME competitiveness and energy efficiency’.

Almost 100 participants took part in the fi-compass Thematic Workshop on social innovation and social entrepreneurship, which took place in Lisbon on 10 September 2019. This was the latest event under the European Social Fund (ESF) workstream of the fi-compass advisory platform.

Jonathan Denness, who became the Head of the Financial Instruments and International Financial Institutions Relations Unit at the Commission’s Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG REGIO) in January 2019, spoke to fi-compass about the importance of financial instruments in complementing traditional Cohesion Policy delivery modes.

Why financial instruments and why use them in your Member State/region?

A new video case study has been published on the fi-compass website that features the financial instrument to support Research, Development and Innovation set up by the Italian Ministry for Education, University and Research (MIUR). This video includes contributions from the managing authority, financial intermediaries and final recipients describing the positive impact of investments by the MIUR financial instrument.

The fi-compass Multi-region assistance (MRA) project Revolving Instruments for Cities in Europe (RICE) is in the focus of an article in the summer 2019 edition of DG REGIO’s Panorama Magazine.