Brussels, 15/10/2015 (Agence Europe) - Austria's Wilhelm Molterer and Iliyana Tsanova of Bulgaria will head up the Investment Committee of the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), the financial arm of the Juncker plan, which aims to draw down €315 billion in additional investments over three years.
These appointments will not be official until a formal decision has been made by the President of the EIB, Werner Hoyer, which will take place imminently, according to a press release issued by the Luxembourg-based European institution. On Wednesday 14 October, the European Parliament gave its blessing to the two appointments at a plenary session held the day after a hearing of Molterer and Tsanova, at which the committee on economic and monetary affairs of the Parliament gave them both a positive assessment.
The steering committee of the EFSI, which is made up of representatives of the European Commission and of the EIB, proposed the appointment of Molterer to the post of Managing Director and Tsanova to the post of Deputy Managing Director. The job of the investment committee will be to issue the public guarantee on the basis of the EU budget to projects supported by the Juncker plan and selected on merit by a panel of experts (see EUROPE 11364).
Molterer served as vice-president of the EIB between 2011 and 2015. A former member of the Austrian Parliament from the Christian Democrat political family, he has also held the position of vice chancellor and finance minister of Austria. Tsanova currently works at the EBRD, where she is director responsible for EU co-financing and financial engineering. Previously, she was deputy prime minister with special responsibility for European structural and investment funds in two separate caretaker governments in Bulgaria. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)