The EIF's own SME outlook borrows Invest Europe's venture data

The record

The European Investment Fund, the European Investment Bank Group's specialist provider of risk financing for entrepreneurship and innovation, publishes a recurring paper called the European Small Business Finance Outlook (ESBFO). The most recent edition I could open is EIF Working Paper 2024/101, titled 'The European Small Business Finance Outlook 2024,' dated Luxembourg, December 2024, and described by the paper itself as an update of a December 2023 edition. It covers four SME markets the EIF names as central to its mission: equity, guarantees, securitisation and inclusive finance, opening with the EIF's own composite indicator before turning to a chapter on private equity and venture capital.

What the sources establish

That opening indicator, the SME Access to Finance Index (ESAF), is the EIF's own measure: a relative indicator that ranks each EU member state's SME financing conditions against the others, not against an absolute benchmark, now in its eleventh iteration using 2023 data. The private-equity and venture-capital chapter that follows is different. A box in the paper states its numbers 'are largely built on statistics from Invest Europe,' the trade association formerly called EVCA, drawing on over 1,150 fund managers covering, Invest Europe says, ninety percent of EUR 1,004 billion in European capital under management as of end-2022. An earlier Working Paper 2012/16, from December 2012, shows the series running under this title for over a decade, though its scope then covered only equity, securitisation and microfinance; guarantees was added later.

Scope and revision

Two boundaries matter. The ESAF ranks relative standing in a single year, not a market total, so a country's rank can fall even as its own conditions improve, if peers improve faster. And the venture and private-equity figures inside the ESBFO are Invest Europe's own figures, under Invest Europe's own fund population, which excludes infrastructure, real estate, private debt, distressed debt, funds-of-funds and business angel activity. The 2024 paper's own footnote warns Invest Europe's statistics 'can differ from the numbers reported by other data providers' owing to differing stage and geographic definitions of 'Europe,' and notes a May 2024 refresh restated the series back to 2007. A figure pulled from this paper and labelled simply 'EIF data' would misstate its origin.

The decision in front of you

Anyone citing the ESBFO for a venture or private-equity figure should first identify which paragraph is the EIF's own ranking and which is a republished Invest Europe statistic, since the two cannot be added together. This is an editorial checklist, not a rule the paper states outright, but it follows directly from the paper's own labelling.

• Is the figure quoted the EIF's own SME Access to Finance Index, or a statistic republished from Invest Europe?
• Does the ESBFO edition cited match the fund population and 'Europe' definition used in that specific chart?
• Has a later edition restated the series being referenced, the way the 2024 edition restated data back to 2007?

The ESBFO is useful because it shows its seams: an EU institution's own relative index sitting beside a trade association's fund-level statistics, each labelled as what it is rather than blended into one number.