European Fund for Strategic Investments

SUMMARY OF:

Regulation (EU) 2015/1017 — the European Fund for Strategic Investments, the European Investment Advisory Hub and the European Investment Project Portal

WHAT IS THE AIM OF THE REGULATION?

It establishes and sets objectives and an implementation framework for:
- a European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI)
- a European Union guarantee and an EU Guarantee Fund
- a European investment advisory hub and
- a European investment project portal.

KEY POINTS

The EFSI aims at supporting strategic investments in key areas, such as infrastructure, energy efficiency, renewable energy, research and innovation, and increasing access to financing for entities with up to 3,000 employees, with a particular focus on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and small mid-cap companies*. It achieves this by providing risk-bearing capacity through its EU guarantee to the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Investment Fund (EIF) (which together make up the EIB Group). Overall, the EFSI had a target to mobilise €500 billion of additional investments by the end of 2020.

The EFSI’s governance consists of:

a Steering Board
an Investment Committee and
a Managing Director.

Eligibility conditions

To be eligible for EFSI support, projects must:

be economically and technically viable;
maximise, where possible, private sector investment;
be consistent with EU policies; and
provide additionality* by addressing market failures or sub-optimal investment situations.

EU guarantee and Guarantee Fund

The EU guarantee is an irrevocable, unconditional and first demand guarantee to the EIB and EIF, which aims to increase the volume of higher-risk projects or support otherwise additional projects. The maximum EU guarantee amounts to €26 billion.

The EU Guarantee Fund is a liquidity cushion from which the EIB Group is to be paid in the event of the default of a supported EFSI operation. It is funded from the EU budget and the revenues originating from EFSI-guaranteed operations.

European Investment Advisory Hub

The hub provides advisory support to public and private project promoters to identify, prepare and develop investment projects.
It acts as a single point of entry to a wide range of advisory and technical assistance programmes and initiatives.
The EU contributed up to €20 million annually towards the costs of European Investment Advisory Hub operations until the end of 2020.

European Investment Project Portal

This is a publicly accessible, user-friendly database containing details of current and future investment projects in the EU.

Extension of the EFSI

The EFSI was created in 2015 for an initial period of 3 years. The initial Regulation (EU) 2015/1017 was amended in December 2017 by Regulation (EU) 2017/2396, which:

extended the life of the EFSI until the end of the 2014-2020 multiannual financial framework (MFF) to enable the mobilisation of at least €500 billion of private and public investment by 2020;
increased the EU guarantee to €26 billion;
increased the EIB’s contribution to €7.5 billion for the full investment period;
adjusted the target rate of the EU Guarantee Fund to 35% of the total EU guarantee obligation to provide an adequate level of protection;
allowed for a transfer from the allocation to the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) under Regulation (EU) No 1316/2013, and from the receipts and repayments under the CEF’s lending instrument and the 2020 European Fund for Energy, Climate Change and Infrastructure (‘Marguerite I’) to partially finance the contribution from the EU general budget to the EU Guarantee Fund for additional investments.

InvestEU programme — EFSI’s successor

The InvestEU programme (Regulation (EU) 2021/523 — see summary) builds on the successful model of the EFSI. It brings together, under one roof, the EFSI and 13 other EU financial instruments. It consists of the InvestEU Fund, Advisory Hub and Portal.
The InvestEU Fund aims to mobilise more than €372 billion of public and private investment through an EU budget guarantee of €26.2 billion that backs the investment of implementing partners such as the EIB Group and other financial institutions.
The InvestEU Advisory Hub provides technical support and assistance to help with the preparation, development, structuring and implementation of investment projects, including capacity building.
The InvestEU Portal brings together investors and project promoters on a single EU-wide platform, by providing an easily accessible and user-friendly database of investment opportunities available within the EU.

FROM WHEN DO THE REGULATIONS APPLY?

Regulation (EU) 2015/1017 has applied since 4 July 2015.
Regulation (EU) 2017/2396 has applied since 30 December 2017.
Regulation (EU) 2021/523 has applied since 1 January 2021.

BACKGROUND

For more information, see:

Investment plan for Europe (European Commission)
EFSI and its legacy (European Investment Bank).

KEY TERMS

Mid-cap companies: although there is no common EU definition, these middle-capitalisation companies are broadly said to have between 250 and 3,000 employees.

Additionality: under EFSI, this term means support for operations which address market failures or suboptimal investment situations and which could not have been carried out in the period during which the EU guarantee can be used, or not to the same extent, by the EIB Group or under existing EU financial instruments without EFSI support.

MAIN DOCUMENT

Regulation (EU) 2015/1017 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 June 2015 on the European Fund for Strategic Investments, the European Investment Advisory Hub and the European Investment Project Portal and amending Regulations (EU) No 1291/2013 and (EU) No 1316/2013 — the European Fund for Strategic Investments (OJ L 169, 1.7.2015, pp. 1-38)

Successive amendments to Regulation (EU) 2015/1017 have been incorporated into the original text. This consolidated version is of documentary value only.