Brussels, 22/02/2016 (Agence Europe) - Regional Policy Commissioner Corina Cretu, Commission Vice-President with responsibility for Jobs, Growth, Investment and Competitiveness Jyrki Katainen and European Investment Bank (EIB) Vice-President Ambroise Fayolle presented a brochure on Monday 22 February providing guidelines to help local and regional authorities combine European structural and investment funds (ESI) and the European fund for strategic investment (EFSI).
At the present moment, “there is a shortfall of some €300 billion to put the European economy back on track towards sustainability”, said Cretu, opining that this brochure was, therefore, a necessity to make life easier for potential recipients. This is “a very first step”, she said. The brochure will develop and change, the Commission says, depending on the feedback provided by recipients.
It sets out how to go about combining ESI and EFSI at project level, at project level through a financial instrument and also for SME funding using EFSI front-loaded, EU-level financial instruments providing guarantees to intermediaries. Combining the funds, the Commission says, can mobilise additional investments by “complementing each other and optimising the additionality of the investments”.
The ESI and EFSI have been designed in a different way but are complementary. The first contributes principally to local and regional projects by means of grants (the financial instruments correspond to roughly 10% of funding) which are implemented at a decentralised level by management authorities, while the EFSI, through the EIB, provides funding for projects that have difficulty in attracting finance from commercial banks because they are too risky. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)