The European Investment Bank (EIB), the European Union's long-term financing institution, is making available to SPGE (Société Publique de Gestion de l'Eau) a long-term loan of EUR 200 million for investment in public sanitation, protection of water catchment areas and priority drainage works.
The finance contract for an initial tranche of EUR 100 million was signed on 22 December 2004 by EIB President Philippe Maystadt and SPGE Board Chairman Jean-Luc Martin in the presence of Jean-Claude Marcourt, Walloon Minister for the Economy and Employment and Benoît Lutgen, Walloon Minister for Agriculture, Rural Affairs, the Environment and Tourism.
SPGE is a public-law company created in 1999. Its principal remit is public sanitation, involving the construction of treatment plants and collectors to deal with domestic wastewater, in order ultimately to achieve compliance with the European Union directive on urban wastewater treatment. To that end, SPGE has drawn up a EUR 2 billion 10-year programme. The first EIB loan tranche (EUR 100 million) will help to fund part of SPGE's investment programme. The EIB's intention is that this will enable SPGE to speed up essential works, so helping it to catch up on lagging compliance with the EU's directives.
The investment programme will have a highly beneficial impact on the environment of the Walloon Region, with a direct effect not only on the cities of Liège, Charleroi and Namur but also on the whole of the Sambre-Meuse and Scheldt basins and beyond, extending to their confluences and ultimately the North Sea.
Speaking at the loan signing ceremony, Philippe Maystadt commented: Since the 1980s, the water and sanitation sector has been a key area for EIB financing, thereby helping the Member States to comply with the Union's environmental directives. The EIB supports projects geared to the integrated and sustainable management of resources. From 1999 to 2003, he pointed out, the EIB had lent a total of EUR 5.8 billion in the European Union for water-related projects, mainly in Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain and, to a lesser extent, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and Sweden.
Additionally, through the global loans instrument, the EIB finances smaller-scale schemes carried out by local authorities, particularly in the field of water distribution and wastewater treatment.
This first operation in Wallonia with SPGE plus the other loans already concluded with the Flemish water treatment company Aquafin brings the EIB's support for this sector in Belgium to EUR 827 million.