European Fund for Strategic Investments: Legal requirements to ensure additionality and added-value of EFSI operations

The first four projects that the European Investment Bank announced for financing under President Juncker’s EUR 315 billion investment initiative, the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), reveal the structural inconsistencies of both the EFSI legal set-up and the EIB procedures themselves. For the time being there is no genuine guarantee about the additionality of EFSI financing and added-value to EU’s long-term economic development objectives, in particular the multiple dividends of a decarbonised and decentralised energy system with substantial energy savings at its heart.

The regulation governing the EFSI needs to ensure transparency and accountability on how the fund will contribute to the achievement of EU long-term objectives, its additionality to EIB usual operations and its added-value for the EU and expected well-being, environmental, social and economic benefits for European citizens.