After the first two installments, devoted to social entrepreneurship and community funding, we continue our review of useful publications with a technical paper, which takes up a question frequently asked even by “insiders” in the field of europlanning.
It is a special report of the European Court of Auditors and the question it answers is as follows: how do the financial instruments associated with specific European programs work.?
The topic of financial instruments is of particular relevance to EU interventions aimed at small and medium-sized enterprises, but not only: there are many directly and indirectly managed European programs that (in addition to providing a grant against the implementation of a project) make use of more complex forms of support, such as loans, guarantees, equity investments and quasi-equity investments.
The form of the proposed document may appear challenging: not only because of its financial subject matter, but also because its main purpose is to provide recommendations to managing authorities on the use of financial instruments in the programs they manage.
However, the document has some very useful elements to provide a general framework of the subject and to clarify some of its obscure sides: a glossary; a table of contents clarifying the nature of the financial instruments; several sample schemes; and final annexes with working schemes and overviews of the financial instruments mobilized by country and by fund.
