Another year has gone past and we would like to thank you for having followed and supported us through all our activities. In case you have missed it, here a short recap of ECN’s main achievements of 2017:
- We have published three main studies on crowdfunding and p2p lending:
- In April 2017, we published the report “Assessing the potential for crowdfunding and other forms of alternative finance to support research and innovation” on behalf of the European Commission, outlining the impact crowdfunding has and can have for research intensive technologies and innovation, together with our partners Open Evidence, EY and Politecnico di Milano. You can read more about it here.
- In July, we published the outcomes of the our research on crowdfunding for cultural and creative sectors “Crowdfunding: Reshaping the crowd’s engagement in culture” on behalf of the European Commission, with our partners IDEA Consult and Ecorys.
- In October 2017, ECN proudly released its third Review of Crowdfunding Regulations which provides a unique and in-depth overview of legal interpretations of current regulatory approaches to crowdfunding, especially securities (equity) and lending (P2P) based models. This substantial paper is a result of our Tax & Legal Work Group formed by specialist Law firms from Europe North America and Israel, led by Osborne Clarke, Germany.
- Earlier in 2017, we have joined our partner AFME and other industry stakeholders in the call for more action on risk capital for Europe’s high growth firms.
- In December 2017, we released a white paper on the potential of crowdfunding for boosting economic and social effectiveness of European Structural and Investment Funds. ECN is setting up a Working Group around this topic as of 2018 to explore further the use of crowdfunding for public authorities.
- Following on from our extensive efforts in 2016, we used to 2017 to closely follow the finalisation of the new Prospectus Law, which will see the Prospectus thresholds for securities being raised from €100,000 to €1m across Europe as of mid-2018 and to €8m for the upper threshold, which remains subject to Member State interpretation.
- Our continuous efforts to raise awareness among EU policymakers, about the obstacles impeding crowdfunding to work at pan-European level, which will see a substantial qualitative ECN study being published by the EC in January 2018, have led the European Commission to consider a proposal for an harmonised EU framework on crowd and peer to peer finance, which should be released toward the end of the first quarter of 2018. ECN will continue to engage in the policy process throughout 2018.
- We have run the 6th Edition of the ECN Crowdfunding Convention, in Vilnius, involving more than 200 industry stakeholders and experts discussing several trends and issues for the sector, including blockchain and cooperation with traditional financial actors.
- Together with some of our members have organized 10 CrowdTuesdays in seven different cities, involving a total of 500+ people.
For information on our other activities supporting Crowdfunding and Peer-to-Peer Finance please see our website or contact us.
That’s all for this year! We would like to thank once more you, our members and our partners for all the support.
We wish you a happy Christmas and a great start in 2018!
