Social innovation concerns the development of new products, methods, and services for and with society involving not only citizens, but also public authorities, business and industry, and academia—i.e., the four constituencies of the “Quadruple Helix”—in their design, development, and execution. Social innovation engages and empowers citizens, enhances the resilience of communities, increases the relevance, acceptance and uptake of innovation, and helps foster lasting changes in social practices, therefore acting as a system changer.

The present call for applications lays down the detailed specifications to apply for Bilateral Cooperation Initiatives.

The EaSI Guarantee Instrument is funded from the EaSI Programme and is specifically dedicated to microfinance and social entrepreneurship. One of its key objectives is to increase the availability of and access to finance for vulnerable groups wishing to launch their own enterprises, micro-enterprises and social enterprises, both in their start-up and development phases.

The European Investment Fund (EIF) and the European Commission recently announced a new initiative to help micro-credit and social enterprise finance providers develop their businesses under the EU Programme for Employment and Social Innovation (EaSI).

The objective of this instrument is to build up the institutional capacity of selected financial intermediaries that have not yet reached sustainability or are in need of risk capital to sustain their growth and development.

As part of the policy response to address the economic disruption caused by COVID-19, certain measures are made available to Financial Intermediaries to provide dedicated support to micro-borrowers, microenterprises and social enterprises. These Support Measures enhance the availability of finance to EaSI target final recipients. The COVID-19 Support Measures shall consist, in principle, of an increase in the risk taking capacity of EaSI Guarantee through the amendment of certain terms of the instrument.

The purpose of the InvestEU Capacity Building Investment (CBI) product is to enhance the institutional capacity of financial intermediaries that have not yet reached sustainability, or that are in need of risk capital to sustain their growth and development.

This includes ‘greenfield financial intermediaries’ as well as all other intermediaries in the fields of microfinance, social entrepreneurship, or skills and education.

As an implementing partner of InvestEU, our portfolio guarantee products support investments for EU’s policy priorities over the period 2022-2027. The EIF, in its role of a guarantor, provides credit risk protection through portfolio (counter-) guarantees to selected financial intermediaries.

These are provided in the form of a capped or uncapped guarantee, and shall partly cover the credit risk of eligible debt financing transactions granted to predefined categories of final recipients and included for coverage in the portfolio(s).