President Calviño showcases progress of European Tech Champions Initiative boosting European scale-ups

Before opening today's event by talking about the European Tech Champions Initiative and the EIB Group’s expanded backing for European scale-ups, please allow me, on behalf of the European Investment Bank Group, to express our profound shock, support and solidarity with the people of Spain, and with everyone who has suffered and continues to suffer from the consequences of the horrible disaster affecting a large swath of our country. Our hearts go out in particular to those who have lost loved ones, homes or property.

I would also like to express my gratitude to all the emergency services and police that have, as always, risen to the occasion and shown their commitment, courage and professionalism in very difficult circumstances.

Events like this highlight how necessary and urgent it really is to invest in climate resilience, adaptation and mitigation. This topic was a common thread linking all of the sessions held during the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Washington, DC just last week. How can we mobilise green finance? How do we finance the investment needed to address the impact of climate change as it becomes increasingly visible in our daily lives?

The good news is that these investments bring substantial returns. Every $1 invested in resilience and prevention saves $5 to $7 in the cost of rebuilding and repairing the damage caused by climate disasters that are unfortunately becoming more frequent and more expensive.

As the EU climate bank, the European Investment Bank has made a clear commitment to ensuring that over 50% of its operations support climate action every year. This week, we signed a strategic agreement with the World Wildlife Fund to look for nature-based solutions that also enable us to restore ecosystems, and this commitment will continue in the coming years. I wanted to highlight this because climate change was a key topic in the discussions last week, and because the disaster currently unfolding in our country shows just how urgent and necessary these investments really are.

The second topic discussed in Washington was how the global order is shifting. The emergence of new powers, the uncertainty on global markets caused by these tensions, war, and the fragmentation of international markets. This major change to the global order obliges Europe to consider what its voice will be in the new international landscape. These questions – how to ensure that Europe has a strong voice in the new global order and how to make the European economy more competitive – are at the very heart of what today is all about.

Now I would like to move on to a slightly more positive part of this opening speech, to talk about the resounding success of the European Tech Champions Initiative. A resounding success for Europe and for Spain, it seeks to give answers to questions in one of the main areas where Europe is at a relative disadvantage, particularly compared to the United States: how to nurture our tech companies. As it stands, these companies simply cannot find the means to grow in Europe. How can we mobilise the financing they need to do this? How do we make sure that the ideas, businesses and technologies born in the European Union can grow, develop and thrive within our borders?

This is what we hope to achieve with the European Tech Champions Initiative. The Letta report, the Draghi report and other expert assessments all call for expanding and strengthening the European ecosystem for financing these fast-growing companies. We've seen the data: 58 of the unicorn companies present in the United States in 2022 were founded in Europe. But when businesses hit the €500 million financing wall, they have to leave the European Union or be acquired by foreign capital to continue to grow.

It is a source of great pride that, in my previous role as minister of economy and vice-president of the Spanish government, we had the clarity of vision to recognise that we needed to nurture and support this financing ecosystem, unlocking funds to help these companies to grow. It is also an honour to be here today with Carme Artigas. When she was Spanish secretary of state for digitalisation, we worked closely together not only to create instruments like the funds managed by ICO – particularly the Next Tech fund – but also to ensure that Spain was a founding partner of the European Tech Champions Initiative. When that first meeting took place and initial contributions were signed, Spain was there with a major commitment placing our country alongside Germany and France in providing the highest levels of financing for the growth of our companies.

As far as I'm concerned, after just a year and a half, the success is clear for all to see. We have closed deals totalling some €2 billion, and mobilising five times that amount in investments across Europe. By next year, we expect to hit the target of €3 billion we had set ourselves for such a short period. EIF Chief Executive Marjut Falkstedt is here today and can go into more detail on this.

And we are seeing that this has a crowding-in effect – where when investment funds understand that co-financing with the European Investment Fund is possible, they decide to grow and become €1 billion mega funds. We have seen this very clearly in Spain, where an initial investment in the Spanish Kembara mega fund – which is also represented here today – has already taken place. Our goal is to have a second Spanish mega fund joining the European Tech Champions Initiative by next year.

This pan-European initiative goes beyond the creation of an ecosystem comprising venture capital and other kinds of investment fund. It has also already invested in two Spanish startups: the respiratory disease treatment company Inke and the HR management software firm Factorial. I am certain that more Spanish startups will receive financing from Spanish mega funds or other EIB Group-backed funds elsewhere in Europe.

We are now busy preparing for the second phase of this great success story to mobilise the private sector. Marco Marrone will speak a little more about how we want to leverage the European Union’s savings potential to expand financing capacity and ensure that European startups and scale-ups stay in Europe. I am sure that Spain will play a key role in this new phase.

Boosting European competitiveness and productivity will also be a priority for the new European Commission set to enter office in December, and for the new European Parliament. Creating broader, more extensive and more integrated capital markets will be vital. This goal – that of the capital markets union – will undoubtedly be a priority going forward. Alongside the legislative initiatives of the EU institutions and the Spanish Ministry of Economy, we at the EIB want to work from the ground up, creating new instruments or scaling up successful ones to mobilise private sector investment throughout the innovation and business life cycles.

We are already working on this by growing and entering phase two of the European Tech Champions Initiative, and by expanding the EIB’s role to stimulate the European green and digital bond market, which we have been leading since the first Climate Awareness Bond was issued in 2007. An exit fund has also been created to finance the exit of initial investors in these fast-growing companies via acquisition by other firms, or via an instrument to facilitate initial public offerings by innovative companies at a late stage of the growth cycle.

The goal is an ambitious one: to close this investment gap across the business life cycle so that companies, ideas and technologies created in Europe can grow and prosper in Europe, remaining European into the late growth stage.

We have success stories. We have a very strong network of cooperation with public sector bodies like ICO in Spain, and with the financial system – banks and funds nationally and across Europe. We can work from this basis to achieve fundamental change in the coming years, overcoming the challenge of how to finance growth and innovation in Europe, and how to ensure that Europe keeps its strong voice in the developing international landscape.

I will end my speech on this positive note of conviction and confidence in our ability to make things better and continue moving forward. I hope the day will be a fruitful and productive one, and that when we look back and reflect in a year’s time, we will have moved beyond phase one to a European Tech Champions Initiative 2.0, beginning to chart a course towards a stronger Europe, a more competitive Europe, a Europe with a better quality of life and greater potential for developing ideas. We have the talent – and we must provide the opportunities it needs right here, at home.

On that note, I thank you very much and I hope you enjoy the rest of the day.

Thank you.