EuVECA

The European Venture Capital Fund Regulation (EuVECA) is a voluntary EU fund regulatory regime that introduces an internal marketing passport for venture capital fund managers. The EuVECA rules were ‘onshored’ into UK law during the Brexit process (although the EU passport no longer applies to UK firms).

EuVECA enables EU fund managers that fall below the threshold at which AIFMD would apply to them (€500 million assets under management, provided the AIF are not leveraged and investors have no redemption rights for the first five years) to market their EU funds across Europe without having to comply with the more onerous requirements that come with the AIFMD passport or rely on a patchwork of national private placement regimes.

The EU amended its EuVECA framework in March 2020. Changes included: greater flexibility on the types of investment that are eligible for EuVECA; limits on the fees and charges that host NCAs can impose; freedom for larger (>500m AuM) fund managers to use the EuVECA label; own funds requirements significantly below the AIFMD level; a revision clause to assess the possibility of extending EuVECA to a cross-border management label. The next review of the EU framework is due by March 2022.