2019 HIGHLIGHTS
Drawing on the full breadth of the EIB Group’s technical and financial knowledge and expertise, we offer our advisory support in a wide range of sectors and policy areas.
“ With our support, more than 150 projects have so far entered the EIB’s lending pipeline, with an estimated project investment of around €34 billion. Around half of these projects are applying for EFSI financing. The quality stamp of the resulting EIB lending support also helps the projects crowd in additional financing from commercial banks and other investors in the market.”
Simon Barnes Head of EIB Advisory Services
The European Investment Advisory Hub, a joint initiative of the European Commission and the European Investment Bank, provides support to identify, prepare and implement projects across Europe. Since its launch in 2015, the Advisory Hub, either directly or through its local partners, has received requests from more than 2 300 project promoters from across the Union.
Our advice is never the same because every project is unique. We tailor our support to each project’s specific needs. A recent survey on a sample of completed assignments shows that more than 90% of our clients believe our support is tailored to their needs, and that they are generally “highly satisfied” with the Advisory Hub’s assistance.
For example, we are devising a more efficient waste collection system to make Thessaloniki a circular city that minimises waste and pollution by reducing, recycling and reusing. In Clermont-Ferrand, urban transport will be more environmentally sustainable as the bus fleet is renewed and optimised and the new tram terminal will produce renewable energy to be fed into the grid. Our advice was key to unlocking a viable financial plan leading to investment.
In 2019, as we continued to respond to all advisory requests received from across the European Union, we paid specific attention to projects that qualify for financing from the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI). We also focused on advisory needs not covered by other EU advisory programmes.
We stimulate investment by working with specific project promoters and also by helping governments and local authorities develop their policy agendas with sectoral studies, capacity-building support and strategic recommendations. This leads to us identifying projects, designing the best funding solutions and combining different sources of financing, as appropriate. Some examples: we are helping the Bulgarian Government train students to become e-mobility experts and join the green mobility transition. Romanians will drive on safer roads, thanks to our help in developing a national road safety strategy and a solid investment programme. In the Czech Republic, we are helping to scale up the use of energy performance contracting with innovative financial instruments, to improve the efficiency of public buildings.
We are helping EU countries address their social challenges by recommending innovative ways to provide more efficient and effective services, combining the expertise of the public and private sectors. With the European Commission and our technical partners, we have established an advisory platform to help government representatives exchange experiences and co-create tomorrow’s tools for an economy of well-being.
"We are now putting climate considerations at the heart of our advisory work, reinforcing the way we put our financial and technical expertise to work in many areas to contribute to our climate ambitions."
Lilyana Pavlova EIB Vice-President responsible for advisory activities
Our network of partner national promotional banks and institutions (NPBIs) grew stronger in 2019. The Advisory Hub held workshops to raise awareness on specific topics, such as energy efficiency investment, public private partnerships and regulatory challenges, including state aid rules for financial instruments. We also entered into several new funding and capacity-building arrangements with our partner NPBIs. We believe that this investment in capacity building will be key to strengthening local expertise and providing more advisory support to smaller projects on the ground.
We are also increasingly advising across sectors, seeing the links between mobility, energy and the digital and circular economies. In this context, helping regions and cities adopt suitable climate resilience and adaptation strategies remained one of our priorities in 2019, as did promoting climate action considerations with our partners and financial intermediaries.
In 2020, we will support more climate investments by combining technical and financial expertise in priority sectors like energy efficiency, digitalisation and the circular economy, as provided for in the upcoming InvestEU framework. We believe we can also play a leading role in supporting the sustainable finance agenda, using products such as climate awareness bonds and green loans and building the capacity of issuers and intermediaries. This will reinforce our contribution to the EU’s sustainable finance objectives and the European Commission’s recently launched Green Deal.