As part of its effort to support growth and employment in Europe, the European Investment Bank (EIB), the European Union's financing institution, is making ECU 200 million available to the DEXIA Group in France and Belgium in the form of global loans (1).

The DEXIA banking group was created in October 1996, when Crédit Local de France and Crédit Communal de Belgique formed a joint undertaking.

These EIB loans are the first to be granted in France and Belgium to finance projects in the labour-intensive education and health sectors. Furthermore, education makes a crucial contribution to supplying a skilled workforce, able to adapt to the realities of the employment market.

The ECU 200 million is broken down as follows:

• a FRF 1 billion (ECU 150 million) loan for Crédit Local de France, signed on 18 November in Paris, in the presence of Mr Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Minister for Economic, Financial and Industrial Affairs, by Mr Pierre Richard, President of Dexia and President of Crédit Local de France, and Sir Brian Unwin, President of the EIB;
  
• a BEF 2 billion (ECU 50 million) loan for Crédit Communal de Belgique, signed on the same day in Brussels, in the presence of Ms Miet Smet, Minister for Employment and Labour, by Mr François Narmon, President of Dexia and President of the Executive Board of Crédit Communal de Belgique, and Mr Rudolf de Korte, EIB Vice-President.

As specialists in local authority financing, Crédit Local de France and Crédit Communal de Belgique will, thanks to their networks and expertise, be able to allocate these funds rapidly for financing numerous projects in the fields of education (schools and higher and technical education) and health (particularly for hospitals). The partnership between the EIB and the Dexia Group is based on some 90 lending operations over the past twenty or thirty years, dedicated to local development infrastructure.

These operations count amongst the first major tangible results of the "Amsterdam Special Action Programme" (ASAP), being implemented by the EIB in support of growth and employment in Europe. The ASAP programme extends the scope of lending by the EIB to include health and education projects and strengthens Bank action in favour of the trans-European networks (TENs) and the environment. It will also enable capital injections to be made from EIB resources in favour of innovative, high-technology and growth-oriented small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Total ASAP operations could, depending on the effectiveness of the various financial instruments put in place, result in additional finance for SMEs of the order of ECU 5 to 9 billion over the next three years, including ECU 500 to 800 million in venture capital.

(1) The EIB's global loans are essentially credit lines, drawn on by the partner banks in accordance with criteria governing the type of investment and final beneficiaries (small and medium-sized enterprises or local authorities).