The ‘European Fund for Strategic Investments’ (EFSI), which preceded the InvestEU programme, played a major role in stimulating additional private investment from 2015 onwards, but failed to achieve the target of €500 billion in additional investment, the European Court of Auditors said in an audit published on Wednesday 19 March.
“EFSI has made a substantial contribution to filling the EU's investment gap and has supported a wide range of different activities, from microfinance to major infrastructure investments, although it has not fully achieved its target investment volume,” said Lefteris Christoforou, the Member of the European Court of Auditors responsible for the audit, in a statement.
According to the European auditors, €131 billion of the investment target set has not been achieved. This situation can be explained by the “weakness” of the methodology used by the European Commission and the EIB to develop and apply the multiplier coefficient for the European public guarantee used to attract private investment. This multiplier was partly based on financing before it was actually paid out to the financial beneficiaries, and it did not deduct cancelled investments.
The Court also notes that financial intermediaries (banks, investment funds) have given a positive assessment of the additional nature of EFSI.
It notes that the Commission has not carried out an ex post analysis of this principle of additionality, which would have made it possible to determine conclusively to what extent the public funds have actually enabled investments to be made which, in the absence of these public funds, would not have been made or would have been made at a lower level. In addition, the evaluations carried out by the Commission lack precision on the impact of the EFSI fund in terms of jobs created and sustainable development. The same applies to the proportion of European funds that went to economic operators in third countries.
To see the Court of Auditors’ report: https://aeur.eu/f/g0s (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)