EU Member States pledge extra funds to the External Investment Plan (EIP)

The Czech Republic and Estonia put over €400,000 extra to the Guarantee Fund of the European Fund for Sustainable Development (EFSD).

Estonia and Germany put over €2 million extra funds in the European Neighbourhood Investment Platform (NIP).

Estonia has recently notified the European Commission about its decision to allocate €100,000 to the EFSD Guarantee Fund to support the investment window “Digital for Development” in the European Neighbourhood Policy countries.

The Czech Republic has notified the European Commission about its decision to allocate €300,000 to the EFSD Guarantee Fund. In addition, its National Development Bank has applied for pillar assessment of the European Commission, in order to prepare for the implementation of the EFSD.

In addition, Germany and Estonia have each pledged €1 million in cash to the NIP, in order to support a broad range of blended finance investments. The NIP covers the countries of the Eastern as well as the Southern Neighbourhood of the European Union. NIP and its African equivalent AIP (Africa Investment Platform) are two existing blending facilities of the European Fund for Sustainable Development (EFSD).

Background

With a total budget of €4.1 billion, the EU’s External Investment Plan (EIP) aims to raise €44 billion by 2020 for sustainable development projects in the European Neighbourhood and Sub-Saharan Africa.

The NIP and AIP are the two regional blending platforms of the EIP with an indicative budget of €2.6 billion; in 2017, they made some €1.3 billion available to over 50 blended finance projects.

A key part of the EIP, the EFSD Guarantee Fund has a volume of €1.5 billion; the first guarantee agreements could be signed in the second half of 2018.