General information on grants

Both national governments and the EU award huge numbers of investment grants and incentives. Each year they allocate grants of over €375 billion. There are now over 20,000 schemes, so there is clearly a need for external specialists to guide you through the maze and ensure that you maximise the impact of external funding.

While Europe’s future competitiveness and sustainability depend on many factors, several stand out: these include new (environmental) technologies, Public-Private Partnerships and the need for more people in knowledge-based occupations. These often depend on initiatives which governments support through grants and incentives.

There are four types of external funding incentives:

1. Grants, where funding is secured ahead of a project’s launch
2. Soft loans, where loans are secured for projects that banks are reluctant to finance
3. Tax incentives that provide financial incentives for leading-edge R&D or capital programmes that contribute to achieving national government or EU strategy
4. Awards that retrospectively recognise industry excellence. These usually come in the form of a financial prize and bring the additional advantage of conferring considerable prestige on your organisation.

Each type of grant can be administered at the regional, national or European level.

Whether you require a grant for a small business or are seeking major European funding, you should consider the following points:

• securing external funding should be part of your organisation’s strategy
• finding the right grants for your projects is increasingly difficult, time-consuming and complex
• timing is often crucial, and potential grants should be considered at a very early stage
• approval for funding confers recognition of the quality of your project.

Once external funding becomes part of your corporate strategy, it can create significant competitive advantage, while helping to build a more sustainable Europe. Living proof of this contention are our clients, who have benefited greatly from grants of all kinds.

If there are future-oriented elements such as innovation or manufacturing excellence in your programmes, we can help you secure additional grant support. For more than 25 years, we’ve helped clients secure hundreds of individual grants, ranging from €20,000 to €50 million. We can also help you sharpen your decisions, for example in choosing the best project locations, the right technology direction or the best partners.

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