Microfinance, EU Structural Funds and Capacity Building for Managing Authorities: A Comparative Analysis of European Convergence Regions by Giovanni Nicola

Part I  
EU Structural Funds, 
Microenterprise and 
Non-financial Services

OPEN
 1 
Financial Crises and EU Credit 
Access Policy   
Francesco Minnetti ,  Pasqualina Porretta and Ervin Sinani    
1.1 Methodology and purposes of the research  
The European Commission’s proposals for the 2014–2020 legislative 
framework aim to increase the flexibility of the regulation, taking into 
account national and sectorial peculiarities; they further seek to improve 
the coherence and consistency between instruments, raise visibility and 
transparency and reduce the number of instruments in order to ensure a 
sufficient critical mass in a context where the amount of funding avail
able is scattered across a large number of regions and recipients.     
Moreover, the European Commission attributes increasing impor
tance to the use of financial engineering instruments, which are consid
ered a more efficient and viable alternative to traditional grant-based 
financing. In fact, one of the main targets of the European Commission 
is to improve the level of knowledge that European resource manage
ment authorities should possess on financial engineering instruments 
(European Parliament, 2013,  Financial Engineering Instruments in Cohesion 
Policy ). The use of financial engineering instruments is an innovative 
way of spending the EU budget, in addition to grants and subsidies. 
In fact, under the cohesion policy, structural funds (SF) have typically 
been allocated to beneficiaries (organisations or projects) through 
(non-repayable) grant funding in order to achieve the objectives and 
outcomes defined in the national or regional operational programmes 
(OPs) priorities. 
The literature and field research helped identify the main advantages 
of using financial engineering instruments: leverage effect, sustain
ability, capacity building, risk coverage, speeding up programme imple
mentation, promoting urban development.

Microfinance, EU Structural Funds and Capacity Building for Managing Authorities: A Comparative Analysis of European Convergence Regions by Giovanni Nicola