On 21 July 2015, the European Investment Bank agreed to cover up to 50% of the credits related to renewable energy investments by the German-French bank Landesbank Saar, as part of the European Fund for Strategic Investments (henceforth: EFSI).
The programme involves a new risk-sharing instrument that will allow EIB to partially guarantee the previously implemented renewable energy projects. This will enable Landesbank Saar to provide further credits to new renewable energy projects, which will no longer be covered by the EFSI guarantee.
According to the EFSI information sheet, the EIB will provide financing worth 150 million EUR and will thereby mobilise investments of 356.3 million EUR.
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".
A state measure in the GTA database is assessed solely in terms of the extent to which its implementation affects foreign commercial interests. On this metric, the investment support proposed here is discriminatory.
The list of affected trading partners is based on Europe's largest financial centres (according to the Global Financial Centres Index).