EIF IN
FRANCE
Investing in the future of French SMEs
Small and medium-size enterprises are the heart of the French economy.
Representing 99% of all businesses and more than two thirds of the workforce, France's 2,826,000 SMEs are responsible for driving innovation as well as spurring on growth, and their daily routine is what ensures the competitiveness of the French economy. But to do that, they often need finance.
At the same time, as the smallest actors in the economy, they are often the hardest hit when the economy encounters turbulence, which is why it is so crucial for them to have financial options in order to maintain and eventually grow their businesses.
At the EIF, our mission is to improve access to finance for small businesses across the EU. In France, we have been supporting SMEs using a broad range of instruments, including many tailored to the needs of the French market and designed with the French government and local authorities.
As a result, we've been able to support more than 471,000 French businesses, ranging from companies addressing microplastic pollution, specialising in water purification, and even an association that trains future booksellers, making sure they have the financial fuel they need to pursue their ambitions.
Our intention is to continue to extend this type of support to the French market, making access to finance easier as we collectively move towards a greener, digital and more inclusive Europe.
Success stories
Calyxia
Success stories
Calyxia
“Microplastic pollution is a ticking time bomb. Microplastics don’t degrade for hundreds of years—they accumulate, and we are producing two million more tonnes every year; 210 species of fish are already polluted; 90% of water is polluted. We will reach a point where this concentration is catastrophic for the environment, biodiversity and human health. That’s why we need immediate action to identify the sources and eliminate them,” says Jamie Walters, CEO and co-founder of Calyxia, a Paris-based company.
Calyxia has developed a unique technology to produce the world’s first readily biodegradable and advanced performance microcapsules to directly combat global microplastic pollution. “We work with top agrochemical companies that cover 80% of the global market, offering a regulation compliant and sustainable solution that preserves soil fertility and biodiversity at no extra cost to the farmer,” he adds. “With our technology and products, I think that within the next 20-30 years we can build an advanced and sustainable future.”
L’école de la librairie
“The profession of bookseller is an appealing one but it’s important to know that it is a highly demanding and difficult job. You have to be up to it,” says Caroline Meneghetti, director of L’école de la librairie, a trade association created by the business librarians association back in 1972. “We offer training to those who are interested in becoming bookstore managers and also to those who wish to change career direction.”
Today, they have 42 trainers and train over 350 booksellers each year. “The pandemic made it clear for us that we had to develop further our online offer to reach overseas candidates and boost distance learning. I’m positive there is future for this profession and growth potential for those who wish to train as booksellers. There is an entire generation of booksellers retiring soon, so there is ample room for new blood. There are libraries all over France that will need new managers and owners.”
Kiro
“Why is it that in other areas digital is everywhere, yet in medicine we are still struggling to make sense of data?” reflects Alexandre Guenoun, co-founder and CEO of Kiro, a French deep tech company that uses artificial intelligence to analyse medical data from clinical laboratories. “Think of finance, trade or advertising—we are able to look at extremely detailed information, analyse at a super-micro-level, and fine-tune our actions. Well, this is what we want to do in medicine.”
Kiro works with patients, medical professionals, and laboratories to help them make more sense of lab results and clinical data. “Lab results are often complex to comprehend. You need to simultaneously consider so many different data points and extract useful information while also considering their evolution with time, which can easily be overwhelming for professionals and an unpleasant experience for patients. This is where we bring in artificial intelligence: to help patients with their understanding and to support doctors and clinical biologists in analysing the data faster and more reliably."
Okeenea
“Disabilities drive innovation. They push us to think outside the box, be creative, smart, consider the bigger picture, be more inclusive so that every single person, without discrimination, can enjoy the things some of us take for granted. Accessibility and mobility have to benefit everyone,” says Sylvain Denoncin CEO of Okeenea.
Okeenea started operating much before smartphones and wearable devices existed. Its original product: a remotely activated pedestrian signal invented to make crossings safer for visually impaired people. “There are more than 250 million people in the world affected by some form of blindness. Helping to improve their lives was a no brainer for us.”
By 2009, it had fitted more than 200,000 units in France and today, Okeenea is a group of companies developing and installing solutions that help include people with disabilities in space, and ultimately, society. The original objective is still the same: make cities and public spaces safe and accessible to all.
Dream Act
“As consumers, we need to make conscious choices, to know that selecting a €3 t-shirt has hidden consequences,” says Diane Scemama, co-founder of Dream Act. “Behind each product, there’s the raw materials, production line, manufacturing, shipping, and workers. Ultimately, this one simple act can potentially have huge repercussions. Our goal is to make sure that people are aware of that.”
Dream Act is a social enterprise promoting responsible and sustainable commerce through its online platform, which operates via two channels: a marketplace selling 35,000 products from over 1000 brands to more than 30,000 clients and as a local B2B platform helping 500 businesses with their marketing and sales. “We offer ecological and fair alternatives to everyday consumer goods. We find local artisans, small emerging brands and retailers that sell innovative and environmentally friendly products and are committed to tackling social and environmental issues; we provide a platform where they are given visibility and a one-stop marketplace to reach consumers.”
Behring
“Our mission is to provide eco-responsible and quality hydration, available to all,” says Grégoire Genot, President of Behring Water. “We want to make available pure and natural water without the need for plastic. I think it’s disturbing that water is offered almost everywhere using public utilities and yet we all go around buying bottled water! A bottle of water could travel 800km to reach you, and even if you opt to recycle it, it will have to travel 800 more. Our products bacteriologically purify the water that reaches your water dispenser, with no need for plastic.”
Based in Grenoble, Behring specialises in water purification. The unique combination of biofilm explosion and UV exposure that Behring proposes renders the water pure and of much higher quality. “15 years ago when we started the business with the aim of replacing bottled water without jeopardizing bacteriological quality, to be honest, nobody really cared. It would have been the last thing people thought about at the time. Today, things are changing,” he explains.
Key figures
Over
of EIF financing
Transactions with financial intermediaries
Equity investments since inception
Guarantees support since inception
made available for
French businesses
Mandates in focus
The EIF continues to deploy capital in France under a wide range of strategic programmes and mandates. Below are brief summaries of our main initiatives in France.
InvestEU
The InvestEU programme provides the EU with crucial long-term funding by leveraging substantial private and public funds in support of a sustainable recovery. It is helping to mobilise private investments for the EU’s policy priorities, such as the European Green Deal and the digital transition. The InvestEU Programme brings together under one roof the multitude of EU financial instruments previously available to support investment in the EU, making funding for investment projects in Europe simpler, more efficient and more flexible. The programme consists of three components: the InvestEU Fund, the InvestEU Advisory Hub and the InvestEU Portal. The InvestEU Fund is implemented through financial partners that will invest in projects using the EU budget guarantee of €26.2 billion. The entire budget guarantee will back the investment projects of the implementing partners, increase their risk-bearing capacity and thus mobilise at least €372 billion in additional investment.
RCR
The EIB’s Risk Capital Resources (RCR) is the core pillar of the EIF’s equity activity. It has enabled us to pursue our equity strategy in the venture capital and growth segments for more than 25 years. In 2023, RCR accounted for 25% of our equity activity, committing €1.4bn to financial intermediaries.
EFSI
The European Fund for Strategic Investments formed part of the EU's Investment Plan for Europe, launched by the European Commission in 2015. EFSI addressed market gaps in financing - whether in infrastructure, research, energy efficiency or risk finance for SMEs – and mobilised private investment into these areas. Through EFSI the EIF deployed €10.5bn in resources of the European Commission, the EIB and the EIF to improve access to finance for SMEs and small midcaps.
EGF
The European Guarantee Fund was created by the EIB Group with contributions from France and other Member States to protect companies struggling in the crisis caused by COVID-19. With almost €25bn in guarantees, the EGF allowed the EIB and EIF to swiftly offer companies, mostly SMEs and mid-caps, access to loans, guarantees, asset-backed securities, capital and other financial instruments. The EGF forms part of the package of recovery measures put in place by the EU, with the objective of providing a total of €540bn to support the hardest hit sectors of the European economy.
ETCI
The European Tech Champions Initiative was launched in February 2023 with EIB Group resources alongside contributions from Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and hopefully soon, also other EU Member States. Managed by the EIF, this is the first of its kind growth stage fund-of-funds in Europe, with and endowment of €3.75bn of capital to tackle the European scale-up gap.
REPowerEU
The EU launched REPowerEU in 2022 to reduce dependence on fossil-fuel imports and accelerate the green transition. To support the plan, in October 2022, the EIB Group developed a package of measures focussing on renewable energy, energy efficiency, electricity networks and on deepening its engagement in green innovation and breakthrough technologies. Under REPowerEU, the EIF will invest €4.5bn by 2027 through EIF equity products.
FAIRE La Réunion
The Fonds d’Aide À l’Investissement Régional pour les Entreprises is the second-generation holding fund seeking to improve access to finance for final recipients, set up in cooperation with the French Region La Réunion. It is managed by the EIF under the current EU funds programming period 2021-2027 and builds on the successful implementation of the previous initiative - La Financière Region Réunion. The first initiative provided more than €100m of financing benefitting more than 600 SMEs operating in the region. The new FAIRE initiative is based on two types of instruments that will help improve financing for small and medium-sized businesses: a funding/portfolio risk-sharing instrument with a generalist focus to facilitate access to finance at better terms (reduction of interest rates and/or collateral requirements) for small businesses; and an equity instrument aiming at strengthening SME equity funding in Region Réunion.
FOSTER
FOSTER Occitanie II (Fonds Occitanie de Soutien Territorial aux Entreprises Régionales) is a third generation holding fund seeking to improve access to finance for final recipients, set up in cooperation with the French Region of Occitanie and managed by the EIF. It builds-on the successful implementation of the JEREMIE Initiative in Languedoc-Roussillon as well as on the first Generation of FOSTER Occitanie. Altogether these initiatives leveraged about EUR 220m of public resources (EU funds and Regional own resources) resulting in over EUR 1.3bn of financing provided for more than 8,500 SMEs and farmers operating in the region in the form of loans or equity support. The new EAFRD - FOSTER II targets the financing needs of farmers and enterprises active in the agricultural, agro-industry, and forestry value chains, which is co-financed by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD). ERDF - FOSTER II is an initiative targeting SME financing needs with a focus on impactful areas (such as economic sovereignty, markets of the future, internationalization, industrial transition, digital transformation, territorial balance, ecological transformation, social economy / micro-entrepreneurship) which is co-financed by the European Regional Development Funds (ERDF).
ALTER’NA
The ESIF EAFRD Nouvelle-Aquitaine fund-of-funds (ALTER’NA) is an EIF-backed guarantee instrument dedicated to facilitating access to finance for farmers and agri-businesses in this region. It promotes investments in the development, processing and marketing of agricultural products. In order to achieve this objective, the ESIF EAFRD Nouvelle-Aquitaine Fund of Funds combines up to €30m of resources from the Rural Development Programs and the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region. It builds on the model of the EIF’s standard First Loss Portfolio Guarantee (FLPG) financial instruments deployed through selected financial intermediaries.
AI Co-investment Facility
The AI Co-Investment Facility is a €150m joint equity instrument targeting companies in the field of artificial intelligence. Launched in December 2020, it is deployed over a period of four years, to support the European AI ecosystem and the European Digital Strategy of the European Commission; and to target the "second equity gap” that companies face when they move into the growth phase of their life cycle. The co-investment structure of this Facility allows the EIB to invest alongside EIF-backed fund managers and private investors.
INAF
The French National Agricultural Initiative – L’Initiative Nationale pour l’Agriculture Française (INAF) – is a new financial instrument designed by the French Ministry of Agriculture (FMA) in close collaboration with the EIF. Its main objective is to create lasting impact in the agricultural sector offering better access to (debt) financing to young farmers, upstream production activities and agro-ecological transition. The aim is to catalyse €800–1000m of investments.
Bourgogne Franche-Comté
The Dispositif Instrument Financier Bourgogne Franche-Comté is a new generation holding fund launched by the EIF in France in close collaboration with Région Bourgogne Franche-Comté. It is the first decentralised financial instrument implemented by the EIF in this region, fully funded by the Region through its European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) resources, contributing to address the EU policy objective for "a more competitive and smarter Europe". As such, it aims to mobilise about €300m of financing towards roughly 2,000 SMEs established or operating in the Region, through both a first-loss guarantee instrument for SME loans and equity investments.
Normandie Garantie Agri
Normandie Garantie Agri is an EIF initiative targeting the financial needs of farmers, enterprises active in the agricultural sector, agro-industry as well as the equestrian sector which is co-financed by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD). The aim of this financial instrument is to support the need for financing and guarantee access to the economic market for young and new farmers. It will make available a free-of-charge first-loss portfolio guarantee supporting €200m worth of new debt financing to farmers and in particular fostering the setting up of young farmers/newcomers; stimulating productive and diversification investments undertaken by farmers; supporting SMEs active in the agro-industry and eventually (a specificity in this Region); and supporting the Equestrian sector.
Auvergne Rhône-Alpes FEADER
Auvergne Rhône-Alpes FEADER is an EIF initiative targeting the financing needs of farmers and enterprises active in the agricultural, agro-industry, and forestry value chains, co-financed by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD), by making available a free of charge first loss portfolio guarantee supporting new debt financing. It specifically seeks to foster the setting-up of young farmers and newcomers; support economic competitiveness of farmers and enterprises in the face of a climate change environment, and; support farmers impacted by climate hazards.
INCF
The Climate & Infrastructure Funds (INCF) is a facility with an annual investment capacity of €400-600m and a primary focus on climate action & environmental sustainability. Targeting a 70% climate content at portfolio level, the underlying investments are expected to contribute to the ambitious targets set out in the EIB Group Climate Bank Roadmap.
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