EMN Charter

The goal of microfinance is to provide access to financial services to those who are financially excluded.

The first objective of the network is the development of microcredit. The maximum amount of a microloan is 25 000 Euros. Microloans are used to finance investment or cash-flow for start-up and existing businesses (microlenders may focus on one or both of these).

Microlenders often, but not always, offer business support to the microbusinesses they finance. Financial and operational sustainability is a targeted objective, but may vary across microlenders and from country to country, and depends on such diverse factors as the amount of business support services offered, economies of scale linked to size of portfolio, and the interest rates that are (and can be legally) charged.

It is extremely rare for microcredit delivery to be secured by collateral. Microlenders have therefore developed a number of innovative practices to reduce risk of default and ensure repayment, including stepped and peer-group lending.

Values

The members of EMN recognise the capacity of all human beings to create and become entrepreneurs. By trusting them, they help them recover self confidence. By seeing them as actors and not objects of social policies, they help to change public opinion as regards people excluded from the labour market. By supporting development of self-employment and of microentreprises, they participate in the new economic revolution, which is not based only on wage labour.

The members of EMN consider that beyond emergency situations and solidarity with those who are not able to work, relations between citizens should be based on exchange and not grant. By integrating itself into the market economy microcredit contributes to open it towards social issues.

The members of EMN consider that microcredit is a financial tool and should, as such, respect the principles of financial management. Its goal is to support the creation of sustainable microfinance programmes and institutions opening access to credit and other financial services to all segments of population. These programmes or institutions should therefore cover progressively their costs.

EMN's action is part of the European social model based on the Lisbon Strategy. The Lisbon Strategy is based on the idea that growth and competitiveness are closely linked with social cohesion and that the mobilisation of the potential of growth requires the participation of all men and women which are presently neglected by economic policies or excluded from economic activity.