EFSI works
To many, it sounded like a fairy tale: you take a bit of money, invest it wisely and within three years it will have multiplied 15 times over. Yet this is exactly what the European Investment Bank Group and the European Commission set out to do as part of their plan for economic recovery after the worst financial crisis since the late 1920s. With the Investment Plan for Europe, also known as the Juncker Plan, they promised to trigger EUR 315 billion of additional investment in the EU by mid-2018. The key to fulfilling this promise was a EUR 21 billion guarantee programme, the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI).
Time has passed, hundreds of projects have benefitted from EFSI support and the plan has turned out to be a success: in July 2018, exactly three years after EFSI came into being, the EIB Group surpassed its initial goal. But what can EUR 315 billion do for a continent? Here are some answers to that question. They also explain why European legislators decided to extend EFSI to EUR 500 billion by 2020.
Key figures:
- EUR 375.5 billion investment mobilised
- EUR 70.4 billion financing approved
- More than 1 000 operations
- To benefit 858 000 small and medium-sized companies
