K&H: more than half of large companies would finance their major investments from EU funds

Hungarian large companies are characterized by moderate enthusiasm for applying for European Union tenders, according to research data from the second quarter of the K&H Large Company Growth Index 2025. Less than one-sixth (15%) of companies have heard of a tender that could be of serious interest, and the same proportion applies to companies that have submitted or plan to submit a tender in the next 12 months. 12 percent of company managers tried to obtain EU funding at least once in the year before the research was conducted, which means that an average of 0.2 applications were submitted per company, while an average of 1.8 applications for EU funding were received from large Hungarian companies.

“The difference between the large corporate segment and SMEs is clearly visible in this area, as the latter are currently showing a keen interest in European Union funding. More than two-thirds of large company managers, 70 percent to be exact, find the calls for proposals complicated, which often discourages them from trying to obtain funding in this way. Interestingly, despite all this, 57 percent of them believe that it would be realistic for them to obtain EU funding. The role of funding may increase in the period ahead, as developments are needed to maintain competitiveness, and funding is needed for this. The currently experienced, “With the sales-profit gap narrowing, it will be much more convenient to develop with the money won in the tender than to implement the investments from your own resources”

– said Tibor Bodor, head of the corporate division of K&H.

EU funds would be spent on large investments

Modernization efforts are typical of large companies, half of the companies plan some kind of development in the next year. Company managers would mostly use EU funds to finance large investments. Most (56%) would spend the money thus obtained on machinery, vehicles or production equipment. “It is a welcome change that digitalization has caught up to second place in the list, with 46 percent of companies setting this as the goal of their applications. This is a huge leap compared to the same period last year, when the demand for IT or technology investment did not even reach 10 percent,” the expert highlighted. The third most popular goal is energy-related developments, with slightly more than a fifth of companies (23%) saying they would use EU funds for this.