European Investment Bank to strengthen impact of RRF investment across Romania

New investment to enhance business financing, climate action and digital investment across Romania under the European Union’s Recovery and Resilience Facility will be strengthened by technical and financial support provided by the European Investment Bank and European Investment Fund confirmed in Bucharest this week.

“The European Investment Bank Group is committed to supporting economic recovery from the pandemic and the green transition across Europe by maximising the impact of new investment backed by the Recovery and Resilience Facility.  The close cooperation between EIB and EIF experts and the Government of Romania, in particular the Ministry of European Investments and Projects and Ministry of Public Finance, has enabled new financing initiatives to be developed that will ensure that business and municipal financing across Romania benefits from the unprecedented recovery scheme” said Christian Kettel-Thomsen, European Investment Bank Vice President.

‘’We are very pleased with the results and the way we are working with the EIB Group in the Romanian Resilience and Recovery Plan: it is the first time that we deploy financial instruments for large corporates in Romania. We look forward to continue benefitting from the EIB’s expertise for the 2021-2027 programming period. We appreciate the wide assistance you provide us on cohesion policy programs and we count on your technical expertise in future projects as well.” Minister Marcel Boloș told EIB representatives.

Romania is expected to receive almost EUR 30 billion of grants and loans from the EU Recovery and Resilience Facility. The Romanian National Recovery and Resilience Plan (“RRP”) setting out the Governments’ priorities for investing this money was approved by the European Council in October 2021.

On May 16^th, Minister Bolos and EIB Vice President Kettel Thomsen celebrated the signature of the creation of a dedicated Fund of Funds of EUR 300 million from the Romanian Recovery and Resilience Fund (“RRF”) to be managed by the European Investment Bank. It will provide direct and intermediated on-lending to Romanian schemes in line with the priorities of RRP.

This latest agreement complements the Funding Agreement signed by the European Investment Fund and the Romanian Government in December 2021 for the implementation of equity instruments for EUR 400 million. In addition, the Government has also indicated the preference for the implementation of guarantee instruments under the InvestEU programme with an allocation of EUR 500m of RRF resources, to be managed by EIF. In cooperation with the European Commission, the instruments are expected to be launched in the second half of 2022.

Over recent months, teams from the Romanian Ministry of European Investments and Projects have worked closely from experts from the European Investment Bank Group. EIB advisory colleagues, including from the regional JASPERS team, are already helping to plan and implement projects to be financed by dedicated RRF actions.

New EIB-managed instruments will make investment into energy efficiency, renewable energy and digitalisation more attractive, while more general backing for the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises will be provided by the European Investment Fund in the form of equity and guarantees.

These financial initiatives are expected to support about EUR 4.5billion  of overall investment over the next five years and in addition to the regular EIB and EIF finance. Last year, the EIB Group provided EUR 907 million for new public and private investment across Romania.