finMED: the European Interreg Mediterranean Project involving 15 partners from 9 countries, aims to increase funding for green innovation
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the driving force of the economy, both nationally and at the European level, contributing significantly to job creation, value-added production and making a significant contribution to both national and European GDP.
Undoubtedly, the SMEs were severely affected by the economic crisis and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lack of equity, lack of access to funding sources, ignorance of the use of programmes and incentives to support business ventures, bureaucratic procedures of the system but also the fear of failure, some of the difficulties highlighted by the finMED project in the Mediterranean, are factors that tackle SMEs wishing to take initiative and innovative actions in the field of green development.
finMED project, aimed at helping to strengthen the financing of SMEs innovation, as well as facilitating the conditions for access to financial resources by SMEs, has developed a series of activities to achieve its goals.
In this context, the finMED tool was designed, which plays the role of a Decision Support System, in order to help Clusters and Business Support Organizations, to provide substantial assistance to SMEs that have developed or are planning to develop innovative solutions in the field of green growth.
Following the same logic and inspired by the finMED tool, the MASDE tool was designed to help SMEs overcome the financial impact of COVID-19.
Meetings were held with financiers, organised by all finMED partners in order to obtain data and information from them, on the one hand, to respond to the proposed financial tools to the needs of green growth SMEs, on the other hand, to facilitate their access to existing financial mechanisms, but also to enhance the links between SMEs and financiers.
An important activity of finMED was the organization of the Business2Finance meetings, one in every partner’s region in order to facilitate the matching between the needs of SMEs and financial institutions and financiers and the identification from SMEs of the matching financial instrument, financier and business support body.
To capitalize on the results of finMED, stakeholders’ meetings were organized by the partners. In these meetings, executives of public regional authorities responsible for the design, development, implementation, and evaluation of financial tools and programmes were invited, as well as they were attended by representatives of Cluster, Business Support Organisation and SMEs.
In these meetings, the need to control, monitor and evaluate the implemented financial instruments, at the regional or national level was highlighted, as their evaluation reflects the range of changes that each financial instrument is expected to bring and any failures of this.
At the same time, it was emphasized that the solution of designing and planning financial tools of “one size fits all” is not efficient as each type of SMEs has different needs and development prospects.
At the European level, finMED presented its results in the High-Level Conference organised in October 2021 in Valencia, Spain. The Conference was attended by, in addition to all the project partners, executives and representatives of financial institutions, such as Equity Funds and venture capitals, while good practices of efficient use of financial instruments were presented.
Particular reference was made to the ESG criteria and the benefits for the SMEs that incorporate them, in order to adhere to the principles and strategies of sustainable development. The adoption of the ESG criteria in the business strategy contributes to sustainable development and corporate governance and is a rapidly rising trend internationally, in order to face challenges such as climate change.
In addition, great emphasis was placed on environmental investment, in which the impact of the investment creates a double line where social and environmental impacts are taken into account equally with economic returns.
In conclusion, finMED project has contributed to the development of financial instrument management skills, public decision-making bodies, clusters and business support bodies.
Financial tools and programmes were adjusted and assigned, tailored to the requirements of SMEs and in addition through the capitalization of the project results, national and European programmes were identified.
finMED project completes its activities within January 2022, however, its tools and results produced remain available to anyone interested, on its website www.finmed.interreg-med.eu
