Sarah Fenwick in Cyprus writes of her efforts to get an EU businss grant.

I’m a Cypriot citizen and EU citizen and decided to look for other types of opportunities to improve my career. Never one to give up easily, I heard about some EU grants offering five million euros in financial resources to women entrepreneurs, and since my goal was always to own a business doing what I love, I scraped together 1000 euros to pay a consultant to do the paperwork and submit my business plan to the ministry of commerce.

I had originally budgeted for the full 100,000 euros allowed, which the government would fund by 50% with a grant, but somehow, due to a complicated procedure I didn’t understand fully, the budget submitted ended up being under 20,000 in total. My consultant told me it was because I would be working from a home office, and despite my explanations that online marketing and journalism are done from wherever there is an Internet connection, this flexible services approach was not a business model that would be understood by the ministry and I would just have to accept their decision.

Then, I waited. And waited. And waited, getting on with my productive work with CyprusNewsReport.com and working as a marketing consultant and jazz singer. Since the grant hadn’t come through yet, I could not see the reason to commit financial resources like getting a bank loan – which the consultant had suggested to do on the basis of the prospect of receiving the grant.

After many months, I contacted the ministry directly to ask what the status of my application was, and after many more months, received an official response that was quite unclear to me. The letter was in Greek and said that I’d received enough points to be accepted in the grant scheme but since there was not enough money for all the successful applicants, other candidates were put ahead of me based on this internal points system.  EU Business Grants in Greece