The European Investment Bank is ready to boost its lending to higher-risk research and development projects to €10bn, which could help mobilise an additional €20bn of private sector investment in innovation.

Philippe Maystadt, EIB president, said there was a growing consensus among European Union member states that the bank – the EU’s financing institution – must invest more to sharpen Europe’s competitiveness in the face of surging Asian economies. “We are in full agreement with the concept,” he said in an interview with the Financial Times, following the bank’s annual conference in Helsinki.