Funding the future - ensuring financing for young innovative companies
Major developments
The Small Business Act or SBA is a policy proposal, and not a binding directive or regulation. The aim was to unite all the existing initiatives under a single legislative document while introducing a series of new measures. The name "Act" is symbolic, as it highlights the political will to recognise the importance of SMEs in the EU economy and to establish a broad policy framework through a set of 10 guiding principles (such as better use State Aid possibilities for SMEs, facilitating SMEs' access to finance, and promoting the upgrading of skills in SMEs and all forms of innovation) and 4 legislative proposals (such as a General Block Exemption Regulation on State Aid and a proposal for a European Private Company Statute) guided by the "Think Small First" principle.
Due to the drying up of the lending market in the current financial and economic crisis, even healthy companies may not be able to get the finance they need. This may seriously endanger their business. With the Temporary Framework for Horizontal State Aid Measures, Member States will be able to grant subsidised loans, loan guarantees at a reduced premium, risk capital for SMEs and direct aids of up to €500,000. All measures are limited until the end of 2010 and subject to certain conditions. Based on Member States' reports, the Commission will evaluate whether the measures should be maintained beyond 2010, depending on whether the crisis continues.
Match2BioSME is an EU-funded project run by EuropaBio to stimulate innovation in the European biotechnology industry by matching the activities of small- and medium-sized companies (SMEs) and academic institutions. Match2BioSME organises partnering events and coaching workshops, and provides online assistance and guidelines to support and expand the knowledge transfer and deal-making process between both actors, as well as to increase the funding of collaborative projects through private and/or EU-sources (i.e. FP7 programme). The development of the Match2BioSME platform has been launched in 2006 with the financial support of the European Commission (Specific Support Action, FP6).
Challenges and opportunities
Funding for demonstrators and public private partnerships (PPPs) for industrial biotechnology and biorefineries is a core part of EuropaBio's work in the area of financing. The objective is to foster the development of a broad and competitive Industrial Biotechnology industry in Europe by investing into research and scale-up facilities.
We will try to realise this via several initiatives including:
- the development and launch of initiatives to mobilise sufficient resources to support a Europe-wide coordinated research programme by means of a public/private partnership by building on the successes of the European Technology Platforms (such as SusChem), FP7 and national research programmes.
- advocating increased support for research covering the entire value chain (from crop to bio-based product) in order to share the risk of the development of innovative bio-based products and processes.
- the development of recommendations to facilitate innovation in this sector and encourage the uptake of research results by the industrial partners.
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