23:11 2 December 2021
43% of EU companies have made climate-related investments this year
As many as 43 percent of companies from the European Union made climate-related investments this year, and 43 percent of them have raised the level of digitization, according to the European Investment Bank report. The main investment barrier is access to a qualified workforce.
The authors of the sixth edition of the report, which includes information on companies' investments in the EU and the US, showed that financial support for companies during lockdowns was of key importance for the maintenance of economies. They wrote that 56 percent of EU firms have received some form of financial support, and four out of five firms in the EU (82 percent) believe that their investment activities over the past three years have been in line with their needs. Similarly, the same percentage of American companies think.
"The pandemic required a swift and courageous response. Both governments and the EU did so," EIB Vice President Ricardo Mourinho Félix said.
He added that at the beginning of the outbreak, the EIB Group was one of the first EU institutions to respond.
"We quickly began targeting contingency financing to companies that needed it, which helped to protect the investment capacity that we urgently need to accelerate green and digital transformation," he pointed out.
(PAP)
