On 16 June 2016, the European Investment Bank agreed to provide a 130 million EUR loan guarantee to the Spanish bank BBVA, as part of the European Fund for Strategic Investments (henceforth: EFSI).
The loan guarantee will be used on a portfolio of SME loans. The freed up capital shall be used to provide financing to other SMEs and midcaps.
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.