the EU bank

JESSICA, making available for EU Member States innovative instruments to finance urban renewal and development, has advanced well within the recent months. Mr. Matthias Kollatz-Ahnen, EIB Vice-President responsible for JESSICA, commented: “I appreciate very much that more and more EU Member States and regions have decided to benefit from the innovative engineering mechanisms to support investment in sustainable urban development. JESSICA was developed to address market failures in the urban sector and the lack of investment in urban renewal and regeneration projects. It contributes to the increase of EU Fund absorption and provides financing for priority urban projects being of significant importance particularly under the conditions of the current crisis”.

Since the end of April 2009, the EIB established with respective national and regional authorities JESSICA Holding Funds with the Republic of Lithuania, the Wielkopolska Region (Poland) and Andalusia (Spain). JESSICA Holding Funds, being managed by the EIB, invest region’s structural fund allocations into Urban Development Funds supporting urban projects with equity, loans or guarantees. These Funds allow EU Member States’ Managing Authorities to delegate some of the tasks, like establishing specific criteria for making investments required in implementing, appraising and recommending appropriate investments, to JESSICA professionals.

In addition, the EIB has signed Memoranda of Understanding related to the creation of JESSICA Holding Funds with Member States and regions in following EU Member States: Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Poland, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom. In these Memoranda the individual regions formulate the way of cooperation with JESSICA corresponding to their needs.

At the request of Managing Authorities the EIB has carried out country or region specific evaluation studies in the following 16 Member States or their regions: Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden and UK. These studies analyse the market gap for financial engineering instruments in support of sustainable urban development in the respective EU regions supported by EU grants in 2007-2013.

Background:

JESSICA stands for Joint European Support for Sustainable Investment in City Areas. This initiative is being developed by the European Commission and the European Investment Bank (EIB), in collaboration with the Council of Europe Development Bank (CEB). The EIB has been mandated by the EU through the enactment of EU Structural Funds Regulations to act as a JESSICA Holding Fund on behalf of those Managing Authorities which want to implement JESSICA structures in their constituencies. Acting as a JESSICA Holding Fund for Managing Authorities is therefore an integral part of the Bank’s commitment both to JESSICA as well as to urban regeneration across Europe.