Publications
& Policy

The Investment Volume outlines practical, evidence-based policy actions to unlock capital and strengthen Europe’s startup ecosystem. Focusing on three core levers—unlocking institutional capital, incentivising angel investment, and reforming public funding—it addresses critical barriers to risk finance across Member States.

Invest Europe’s response reiterates key messages and highlights the long-term benefits of the proposed simplification measures, if delivered in a consistent manner and taking into account how these sustainability frameworks will be used in practice.

In this 100-pages response, Invest Europe flagged various concerns regarding the state of EU capital markets, looking at improvements to be made to the AIFM Directive and its implementation in Member States. Notably, the response calls for an increase of the AIFMD threshold, a better recognition of the private equity features, a simplification of the managers' authorisation process across the EU, of pre-marketing requirements as well as depositary rules. It also gives the European Commission insights on the costs of AIFMD in various jurisdictions.

This position paper is a follow-up to Invest Europe's response to the public consultation on the review of DAC 1-6 from August 2024. It offers a critical assessment of the EU Directive DAC6, which mandates disclosure of potentially aggressive cross-border tax arrangements. While supporting its transparency goals, the letter highlights the Directive's excessive compliance burdens, inconsistent interpretations across Member States, and limited practical effectiveness. It calls for targeted reforms—such as clearer guidance, refined hallmarks, harmonized implementation, and streamlined procedures—to make DAC6 more proportionate, effective, and aligned with broader EU competitiveness and tax simplification objectives.

The American Investment Council (AIC) released a new report using data from PitchBook showing how private equity (PE) investments empower workers with competitive wages and benefits, innovative ownership programs, and professional skill development.

Private equity (PE), venture capital (VC), and infrastructure managers operate under a model setting that is distinctly apart from deposit-taking or high-frequency transactional institutions. As such, many of the more granular provisions in the RTS — including those concerning customers’ transactional behaviour, real-time remote identification, and direct engagement with natural persons — are of very limited applicability for the entire PE-, Infrastructure investment and VC industry. We encourage EBA to recognise these distinctions in application and guidance, in line with the proportionality principle.

Invest Europe’s response highlights the need to close Europe’s biotech commercialization gap by accelerating time to market for breakthrough innovations, bridging the biotech investment gap, unlocking the potential of data, AI and quantum computing, and strengthening Europe’s entrepreneurial workforce.

In this letter Invest Europe addresses the European Commission's upcoming review of VAT rules for financial and insurance services, emphasizing the critical importance of maintaining and harmonizing the VAT exemption for fund management across the EU. It argues that inconsistent interpretations among Member States create uncertainty and undermine competitiveness, especially for private equity and venture capital funds. Invest Europe urges the Commission to preserve the current exemptions to avoid increased costs and reduced investment in EU businesses, which would negatively impact economic growth and innovation.

Invest Europe’s response focuses on targeted improvements to CSRD, CSDDD and the EU Taxonomy to ensure they remain practical, proportionate and aligned with investor needs. Key recommendations include simplifying materiality assessments, ensuring realistic assurance and due diligence exercises, and improving interoperability with global and EU frameworks.

The EIF launched a new format within its long-running Equity Surveys series. The VC/PE Barometer Survey will now track the market sentiment on quarterly basis. By gauging fund managers’ perspectives across key indicators – including fundraising, exits, valuations, access to external finance, new investments, and deal flow – the survey offers a comprehensive view of current market dynamics and forward-looking expectations. Each edition also features an in-depth focus topic. This edition (2025/1) includes an overview of the current market sentiment; and examines in further depth the perceived impact of the new US administration policies on the European VC/PE landscape.

During this webinar, we discussed the Alternative Investment Fund Managers' Directive and its implications on Invest Europe members.

This response to the European Commission’s Call for Evidence outlines the industry’s views on the future direction of the SFDR, reaffirming – among other points – that it should remain a disclosure-based regime and that clear grandfathering provisions should be introduced.

Our 2024 Annual Report, published for the first time also as an online report, provides a comprehensive overview of the association’s key achievements, outlines our priorities for the current year, and sets out our long-term strategic vision.

The Argos Index® was down 3% to 9.5x EBITDA in Q1 2025. The 2024 recovery of mid-market prices was short-lived, as the M&A activity. Transaction multiples declined, at a similar pace, on all market segments: on the lower and upper mid-markets, and for both investment funds and strategic buyers.

An annual survey, undertaken on behalf of Invest Europe, that collects comprehensive and robust activity data on fundraising, investment and divestment from more than 1,750 private equity and venture capital firms in Europe. For the first time, Invest Europe’s data also includes listed private capital investment, highlighting this growing segment and its role in giving listed equities investors a route into private companies.