Today in Rome, the European Investment Bank (EIB) signed a EUR 480 million finance contract in support of the MOSE engineering system designed to help protect Venice. The loan will be granted to the Consorzio Venezia Nuova (CVN), the special purpose vehicle charged with implementing the MOSE project by the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport via the Venice Water Authority. It gives effect to the 2008 decision of the inter-ministerial economic planning committee (CIPE) to allocate EUR 800 million to MOSE.
The overall MOSE project consists of the construction at the three inlets to the Venice lagoon (Lido, Malamocco and Chioggia) of a system of breakwaters and mobile barriers to protect the city from storm surges. It is not an isolated scheme but forms part of the general plan to safeguard Venice and the lagoon launched by the Infrastructure Ministry in1987.
For the EIB, the operation meets a number of financing priorities such as support for infrastructure works and environmental protection. Two years ago it approved a loan of up to EUR 1.5 billion for the MOSE project. The contract signed today represents a major first instalment of that loan and also falls within the October 2008 framework agreement between the EIB and the Infrastructure Ministry to finance works included in the Italian Government’s 10-year strategic infrastructure plan. That agreement provided for EIB financing for Italian infrastructure of up to EUR 15 billion, but loans totalling nearly EUR 6 billion have been signed in the first two and a half years alone.
EIB
The European Investment Bank supports the strategic and policy objectives of the European Union by granting long-term loans for economically viable investment projects. The EIB’s shareholders are the 27 EU Member States. Italy is one of the four leading shareholders, along with the United Kingdom, Germany and France, each holding a 16.2% stake in the Bank.