Boosting economic recovery: EUR 13 million in React-EU grants for SME voucher scheme

Ljubljana, 15 July 2021 – Government Office for Development and European Cohesion Policy has approved EU funding for the project React-EU – Voucher scheme for SMEs. The EUR 26 million project will be implemented by the Slovene Enterprise Fund and supported by the EU, with the contribution from the European Regional Development Fund standing at EUR 13 million. This is already the seventh React-EU investment under the NextGenerationEU instrument which has been adopted by the Commission to help Member States recover after the pandemic.

The project aims to support the recovery of the economy after the covid-19 crisis and helps SMEs emerge stronger after the pandemic as it importantly facilitates their access to small-scale incentives. The incentives will help the enterprises improve their competences and strengthen their competitiveness. The project will especially foster innovation in areas of digitalization, circular economy, certification, intellectual property protection, ownership transfer and internationalization.

This is already the seventh investment under the React-EU initiative in the past few months. The investments from React-EU have also been made into relocating the Department of Pulmonary Diseases to the premises of the University Medical Centre Maribor (EUR 3.6 million, February 2021), providing additional space for the Ljubljana intermediate care department (EUR 4.5 million, March 2021), setting up an IT-supported vaccination appointment scheduling system for primary-level facilities, (EUR 1.5 million, May 2021), launching a call for proposals for co-financing investment into infrastructure to strengthen resilience of institutional care facilities by taking into account deinstitutionalisation (EUR 93 million, May 2021), and a call for proposals called Incentives for digital transformation of SMEs - P4D React EU (EUR 30 million, June 2021), and carrying out deep energy-saving renovation of the buildings of the University Medical Centre Ljubljana (EUR 50 million, June 2021).