Study on imperfections in the area of microfinance and options how to address them through an EU financial instrument : final progress report

This Report documents the results of the project "Study on imperfections in the area of microfinance and options how to address them through an EU financial instrument" commissioned by the European Commission, DG Employment. This project addressed the following central issues connected with an ex-ante assessment of the planned EU financial instrument on microfinance under the EaSI programme: the market situation for micro credit provision throughout Europe and how it translates into sub optimal investment situations for MFIs to be addressed through an EU financial instrument ; the variety of possible financial instruments in microfinance and how they may be used by the new EU facility to support micro credit portfolios and institutions ; the lessons to be learned from Progress Microfinance and how they can be used to fine tune the new EU instrument/facility ; the existing public activities to support micro credit provision in Europe and how they can be integrated with the new EU instrument/facility The methodology that was chosen to analyse these issues of the study is explained in the first chapter of this report. After that the report documents the results of the project along its three analytical strands and provides detailed recommendations for setting up the new EU financial instrument/facility in the framework provided by the Employment and Social Innovation programme (EaSI) that was endorsed by the legislators of the European Union in December 2013.