EU launches voluntary pact to steer institutional money into European tech scale-ups

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The European Commission and the EIB Group have launched the European Institutional Investors Pact, presented at the TechEU Equity Summit. It is a voluntary framework meant to get banks, pension funds and insurers to put more long-term money into European venture capital and growth equity funds. Thirteen institutional investors have said they intend to invest through it, including via the €15 billion European Tech Champions Initiative 2.0 and the €5 billion Scaleup Europe Fund, which EQT manages. For now that is an expression of intent, which in institutional finance is a recognised and necessary stage before anyone wires anything.

The pact has two parts. The Commission will run a policy forum where investors can discuss regulation and EU investment policy. The EIB Group will run an investment platform that shares pipelines and market intelligence and aims to offer routes toward exits. EIB Group President Nadia Calviño described the goal as giving investors "a single, credible entry point into innovation financing." The stated problem is that European companies often lack enough late-stage capital to scale while staying in Europe.

The original Tech Champions Initiative was launched in 2023 by the EIB Group and six member states and has since backed 15 large funds and 47 scale-ups, 15 of them unicorns. Its second version, endorsed by all 27 member states, aims to mobilise up to €80 billion.