In response to the Covid19 pandemic, the EU and its member countries have adopted a transformational investment and recovery programme worth 1.8 trillion euro to benefit European companies. The unprecedented scale of the resources made available by the EU represents a massive opportunity for investments in innovative projects (especially linked to the sustainable and digital transformations) that aim to:
- Get new business ideas off the ground;
- Accelerate the impact of investments;
- Enhance innovation and community development projects.
At the same time, it is an immense challenge for private, public and third sector organisations to navigate and make use of existing EU funding opportunities. For example, by the end of 2020, EU countries had spent less than 50% of the Regional Funds available to them between 2014 and 2020.This is often due to:
- Lack of knowledge about available funding opportunities;
- Lack of administrative know-how, managerial and/or financial skills to access funding;
- Lack of European networks to build winning partnerships.
