A slew of new projects from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) have received the go-ahead from the InvestEU Investment Committee.
Under the auspices of the various projects, investments totalling €1.1bn will be used to boost green and sustainable projects in the municipal, transport and energy sectors.
According to the EBRD: “The InvestEU Investment Committee has approved guarantees worth up to around €150m for the first EBRD operations. This follows and is part of the signing of an InvestEU guarantee agreement worth up to €450m between the European Commission and the EBRD.”
It added that the financing would “support the EBRD’s successful Green Cities programme, which is active in more than 50 urban areas to help accelerate their green transition. It will aid recovery from the recent Covid-19 crisis, address infrastructure gaps and improve the competitiveness and socio-economic convergence of these EU countries with other member states.”
Infrastructure and innovative investment
All this follows an earlier announcement, made in February, that the EBRD and European Commission had signed a €60m agreement with InvestEU. That agreement was to provide advisory support for infrastructure, digitalisation, and innovative investment projects.
Back then, it wrote: “Under the InvestEU Advisory Hub, the EBRD will provide project advisory support, capacity building support and market development to project promoters and financial intermediaries in the EU. The total support for the provision of advisory services under this agreement will amount to €60.2m.”
It added: “Of this sum, €38.7m comes from the EU compartment through the InvestEU Advisory Hub budget, which covers several advisory initiatives that will be available in all EU Member States in which the EBRD is active.
“The rest is covered by two Member State compartments that are dedicated to Romania (€11m) and Greece (€10.5m). These are funded from the countries’ Recovery and Resilience Facility resources and will support them in implementing their recovery and resilience plans, by helping to improve competitiveness as well as climate and environmental projects in the two countries.”
