Another early-stage mandate in support of the European microfinance sector was the European Parliament Preparatory Action (“EPPA”), a EUR 4m envelope under which the EIF has, since April 2010, made four risk capital investments and loans to non bank MFIs. While these windows served as an opportunity for market testing, their pilot nature and limited scale and scope represented a constraint on the market impact that these EU initiatives could deliver. Instead, the potential for EU-funded microfinance initiatives to effect more sizeable market impact in the EU-27 came with the launch of the Progress Microfinance initiative in 2010. .
