An agreement was signed in recent days in Rome at the Regional Cohesion Agency, an operating entity reporting to the Ministry for Regional Cohesion and Southern Italy, between the Managing Authority of the National Operational Programme for Research and Innovation (NOP R&I) and the European Investment Bank (EIB) to set up a new financial instrument: a Fund of Funds, with an initial allocation of EUR 200m, which will use loans and venture capital to invest in high technology content research projects located in southern Italian regions aimed at improving their competitiveness.  

The new fund, which by attracting private investment may grow to EUR 300m in total, will finance research and innovation projects in the eight Regions targeted by the NOP R&I: Abruzzo, Molise, Sardinia, Basilicata, Campania, Calabria, Puglia and Sicily. The following will be eligible for finance: companies of all sizes, universities, research centres and other public or private research and innovation entities that are promoting industrial research projects in Key Enabling Technologies (KETs): nanotechnology, micro/nanoelectronics, industrial biotechnology, photonics, advanced materials and advanced manufacturing technologies.

“This partnership with the EIB”, stated Minister Claudio De Vincenti, “is implementing for the first time at national level an innovative method of managing EU and domestic funds earmarked under the cohesion policy that will make spending more efficient and effective. However, the importance of the agreement goes further: a fund strategy has in fact been defined with the EIB that paves the way for systemic actions in order to test a national investment platform for research and innovation that can attract additional sources of conventional financing and EU structural and investment funds.”

“In this broader context”, said EIB Vice-President Dario Scannapieco, “the EIB will provide more own resources and act as a catalyst for new projects that can be financed by the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), the structure established as part of the Investment Plan for Europe (the so-called Juncker Plan). The first step towards making the fund operational will now be to launch a tendering procedure to select intermediaries to manage the financial instruments.”

Specifically, the aim is to help generate the technological and innovative know-how for the value chains identified under the thematic areas of the National Smart Specialisation Strategy (SNSI). According to the new rules for the EU’s 2014-2020 programming period, national and regional authorities must set out their own “strategy” for the use of resources in the fields of research, development and innovation in order to promote the establishment in each State of an innovation and competitiveness segment that can turn the findings of research and innovation into concrete projects and therefore into a competitive advantage for the production system.