The Commission’s ex-post evaluation finds that the Investment Plan for Europe made important contribution to mobilising investment for growth and job creation

The ex-post evaluation of the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), the main pillar of the Commission’s flagship programme Investment Plan for Europe, finds that it played an important role in accelerating and incentivising investment across Europe.

The Commission proposed the Investment Plan for Europe in 2014 to support growth and job creation, as a response to the economic and financial crisis. As of 2021, EFSI is expected to have mobilised €524.3 billion of private and public investment, exceeding the target of €500 billion.

The evaluation finds that the EU budget guarantee provided to the European Investment Bank Group (EIBG) for implementing EFSI successfully increased its risk-bearing capacity. This allowed it to take on new, higher-risk financing support, for instance for SMEs and research projects. While some of the EFSI-backed investments could have taken place without EFSI, the evaluation finds that they would have taken place at a reduced scale and slower pace.

Furthermore, it finds that the second pillar of the Investment Plan for Europe, composed of the European Investment Advisory Hub (EIAH) and the European Investment Project Portal (EIPP), functioned effectively as an entry point for technical and financial advisory services. They actively contributed to investment generation and to improving the visibility of around 1,200 investment projects published on the EIPP.

The InvestEU programme builds on the successful model of the Investment Plan for Europe and implements key lessons learnt from it, like the simplification of the financial instruments’ architecture, a more policy-driven focus on geographical and sectoral needs, as well as direct access to other implementing partners (including national promotional banks and international financial institutions such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Council of Europe Development Bank and Nordic Investment Bank) beyond the EIBG to benefit from their specific financial and sectoral expertise, deep knowledge of the local market and enlarge the reach of the InvestEU, increasing the potential pool of final beneficiaries. InvestEU has already started to support projects across the EU, and aims to attract public and private financing to mobilise at least €372 billion in additional investment by 2027.

The ex-post evaluation of the first and second pillars of the Investment Plan for Europe has been submitted to the European Parliament and the Council. It is available here.