This loan is being made available to the government of the Saarland through the intermediary of SaarLB. It will be used to finance part of the Land government's investment programme to improve healthcare, higher education, research and development.
Half the funding will be used to modernise the university hospital, in particular for a new outpatient building for surgery and internal medicine, renovation of a bed block, new library and research facilities, renovation and refurbishment of intensive care wards, a new clinical IT and communication system, extension of a pathology department, refurbishment and development of a human genetics facility and renovation of a pharmacology/toxicology unit. The main aim is to improve the quality of care and research, as opposed to expanding the capacity to treat inpatients.
The bulk of the remaining funds will be used to finance investment designed to improve the quality of university facilities, libraries and infrastructure.
The aim of the investment is to enable the quality of care to be improved, at the same time as enhancing the training facilities and assisting research and development in biomedicine. The Saarland has strengths in biomedicine and biotechnology, as well as environmental technology, and by expanding its R&D capacities it sees opportunities for exploiting new economic sectors and creating skilled jobs.
The investment programme will be carried out by the Land government between 2004 and 2006.
On signing the finance contract with SaarLB, EIB Vice-President Wolfgang Roth stated that the EIB supports the economic restructuring of the Saarland, as it has demonstrated on several occasions. Investment in human capital, education, research, development and innovation is the best means of achieving this in the long term, especially when steps are also taken to ensure that the knowledge available at universities is channelled to both large businesses and SMEs. In this way, the Saarland and Europe as a whole can achieve what they have set out to do, namely boost innovation and thereby improve competitiveness.
The chairman of SaarLB, Dr Max Häring, stressed that we welcome our steady partnership with the EIB. With its high funding volumes, the EIB can raise capital on better terms than we are able to do, and thanks to the favourable conditions provided by the EIB SaarLB can continue to support the Land government's programme of investment in economic restructuring.
The EIB, the European Union's long-term financing institution, has in recent years co-financed a number of investment programmes by the Land government using SaarLB as an intermediary, such as the Saarland Road Infrastructure, Saarland Universities and Saarland Industry Framework projects. In addition, the EIB has granted loans, with SaarLB as intermediary/guarantor, for numerous individual projects in the energy, transport and industrial sectors. Last year, the EIB issued a second global loan of EUR 100m to SaarLB, to finance cross-border investment in the SaarLorLux region in the environmental, energy and infrastructure sectors, including health, education and urban renewal.
Overall between 1999 and 2003, the EIB has financed projects in the Saarland amounting to EUR 428m.