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The European Commission and the European Investment Bank (EIB) Group have delivered on their pledge to mobilize 500 bn  euros in investment under the Investment Plan for Europe, the European Commission said.'

Some 1,400 operations have been approved under the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), using a budget guarantee from the European Union and own resources from the EIB Group. They are expected to trigger close to 514 bn  euros in additional investment across EU countries and to benefit some 1.4 million small and mid-sized companies.

In 2017, when the Council and the Parliament agreed to broaden the EFSI's scope and size, the goal was to mobilize 500 bn  euros by the end of 2020. The money was intended to address the investment gap left as a result of the 2007/8 financial and economic crisis.

Over the past years and especially after the coronavirus outbreak, the focus of the EFSI shifted: it has inspired InvestEU, the Commission's new investment program for the years 2021-2027, and already now it contributes to the Corona Response Investment Initiative.

EFSI will also play a key role in the NextGenerationEU package of measures to rebuild the European economy after the coronavirus shock. It will do this via a top-up for a Solvency Support Instrument, which aims to prevent insolvencies in European businesses.

"The Investment Plan for Europe is a success. Over the past five years, it has enabled the financing of hundreds of thousands of businesses and projects, delivering on our ambitions of making Europe more green, innovative and fair. We will continue this through NextGenerationEU," President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said.

The EFSI allows the EIB Group to finance operations that are riskier than its average investments.

Often, EFSI-backed projects are highly innovative, undertaken by small companies without a credit history, or they pool smaller infrastructure needs by sector and geography.

Supporting such projects required the EIB Group to develop new financing products, for example venture debt with equity features or investment platforms. This changed the DNA of the Bank and revolutionized the way Europe finances its priorities.

Importantly, the EFSI also enables the EIB to approve a greater number of projects than would be possible without the EU budget guarantee's backing, as well as to reach out to new clients: three out of four receiving EFSI backing are new to the bank. This proves the added value of EFSI operations.

Thanks to EFSI support, the EIB and its subsidiary for financing small businesses, the European Investment Fund (EIF), have provided financing for hundreds of thousands of SMEs across a wide range of sectors and in all EU countries. Examples range from sustainable agriculture in Belgium, to innovative medical technology in Spain, to an energy efficiency company in Lithuania.

The impact of the initiative is sizable. Based on results from December 2019, the EIB's Economics Department and the Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) estimate that EFSI operations have supported around 1.4 mln jobs with the figure set to rise to 1.8 mln jobs by 2022 compared to the baseline scenario. In addition, calculations show that the initiative has increased EU GDP by 1.3% and it is set to increase EU GDP by 1.9% by 2022. As of the beginning of this year, 60 percent of the capital raised came from private resources, meaning that EFSI has also met its objective of mobilizing private investment. 

Measured against the size of the economy the biggest impact is in countries that were hard hit by the 2007/8 crisis, that is Cyprus, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and Spain.

While the direct investment impact is particularly high in those countries, the calculations found that cohesion regions, mostly Eastern European countries, are likely to benefit more from a long-term effect. These calculations correspond with the actual financing activities under EFSI: top countries ranked by EFSI-triggered investment relative to GDP are Bulgaria, Greece, Portugal, Estonia, and Spain.

The EIB's EFSI report 2019 lists a number of concrete outcomes of the initiative. Thanks to the EFSI, some 20 mln additional households can access high-speed broadband, around 540,000 social and affordable housing units have been built or renovated, 22 mln Europeans benefit from improved health care services, some 400 mln passenger trips per year will benefit from new or improved transport infrastructure, 13.4 mln households were supplied with renewable energy.