Global Trade Alert

On 12 June 2015, the European Investment Bank decided to provide 75 million EUR to the Metsä Fibre Oy bio-product mill in Äänekoski as part of the European Fund for Strategic Investments (henceforth: EFSI).
The EFSI financing will be used to construct a new bio-product pulp mill that will replace the old factory in the same location.
EFSI support does not fall under EU State Aid rules as it is meant as a tool to address "market failures or sub-optimal investment situations". However, the investment support does include favourable conditions in the form of public assumption of risk. As described in the European Commission's Fact Sheet form 20 July 2015:
"The type of risk-financing instruments will be designed so as to take uncertainty out ("first loss protection") of as such viable projects and therefore crowd-in private sector investments. Since the EFSI will take riskier tranches in investment projects, the private sector will be able to join under more favourable conditions." Furthermore, the EIB states that "The new initiative 'i.e. the EFSI' will benefit from the EIB's strong credit standing that enables funding at favourable conditions and across maturities".
 
Furthermore, the project has received a 32.1 million subsidy from the Finnish government, which was approved by the European Commission on 10 March 2016 (cf. Related Measures).

A state measure in the GTA database is assessed solely in terms of the extent to which its implementation affects the extent of discrimination against foreign commercial interests. On this metric, the state aid proposed here is discriminatory.