Following this week’s meeting of the European Investment Bank’s Board of Directors, the Juncker Plan is now expected to trigger EUR 194 billion in investments across all 28 Member States.
This represents well over half of the EUR 315 billion target of total investments to be mobilised by the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), the heart of the Juncker Plan, that was originally earmarked. The operations approved under the EFSI represent a total financing volume of just under EUR 37 billion.
The EIB has now approved 224 EFSI-backed projects under the EFSI’s Infrastructure and Innovation Window, worth just under EUR 28 billion in EFSI financing. The European Investment Fund (EIF) has now approved 275 SME financing agreements, with total financing under the EFSI of almost EUR 9 billion.
Given its success so far, President Juncker has made it clear that the proposal to extend and reinforce the EFSI (the so-called “EFSI 2.0”) is among the Commission’s top legislative priorities. The proposal has already made good progress. The Commission welcomed this week’s European Parliament vote on the EFSI 2.0 and now calls on the Parliament and Member States to continue working towards the final adoption of the EFSI 2.0 proposal as quickly as possible.
