Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs)
One of the EIB Group's key operational priorities is to support investment by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), a powerful driving force of the EU's economy. The European Union has 23 million enterprises with fewer than 250 employees, making up 99% of businesses and employing over 100 million people.
In late 2007, the EIB Group conducted an extensive survey of banking partners, public authorities and SMEs in order to better understand the SME financing market in the 27 EU Member States. At the instigation of its Board of Governors, which met on 3 June 2008, the EIB Group now intends to introduce new procedures to support SMEs, to simplify its financing facilities, make them more transparent and tailor them better to the needs of small businesses throughout Europe and elsewhere in the world.
Among the SME facilities currently offered by the EIB Group, the most common are:
- SME credit lines established by the EIB in cooperation with local banks
- EIF venture capital facilities
- EIF blanket guarantees in support of SMEs
- the JEREMIE initiative: (Joint European Resources for Micro to Medium Enterprises)