The European Investment Bank and Bpifrance, France’s public investment bank, have signed an agreement which gives innovative small and medium-sized French businesses access to loans worth a total of €420 million over the next two years.
The agreement, made on 12 May, will make €200m available to French businesses from 15 May. The loan fund will be guaranteed by the European Fund for Strategic Investments—the operational element of the investment plan proposed by European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker in November 2014.
Negotiations on the final legislation for the Juncker plan are still ongoing, and have proved controversial because of plans to use €2.7 billion from Horizon 2020 to back the fund. If agreed upon, the Juncker plan hopes to raise a total of €315bn from public and private sources.
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