Preliminary assessment of the first payment request of Romania

All elements of the CID Annex have been addressed. In particular:  The Contribution Agreement defines the financial instrument to be implemented as a portfolio guarantee (Clause of the Contribution Agreement [“Clause”] 11.2).  In line with the Contribution Agreement and Art. 10 of the InvestEU Regulation, Romania proposed the EBRD as implementing partner (Clause 13.2). In line with Art. 15 of the InvestEU Regulation and as indicated in the Council Implementing Decision (“CID”), the European Commission and the EBRD are to sign a guarantee agreement that implements the financial instrument (Clause 13.1).  The portfolio guarantee aims at delivering finance and investments for energy efficiency and renewable energy in the residential and buildings sector (Clause 11.1) through debt financing (Clause 11.2).  The target of the instruments are individuals and SMEs as defined in the Annex to Commission

Recommendation 2003/361/EC concerning the definition of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises – that is, self-employed persons or enterprises which employ fewer than 250 persons and which have an annual turnover not exceeding EUR 50 million, and/or an annual balance sheet total not exceeding EUR 43 million. In line with the milestone description, the financial instrument is expected to support at least 100 beneficiaries – as stated in a dedicated note prepared by the implementing partner and in the cover note. The guarantee agreement will provide further and more refined detail about the final targeted companies (Annex 4, Part I, Sections 6 and 7).  The structure of the instrument enables to leverage private funds, as the minimum leverage of the financial product is set at four (clause 11.2). This is in line with the CID.  The Contribution Agreement requires the Guarantee Agreement (to be signed by the European Commission and the implementing partner) to include provisions ensuring compliance of the

financial instrument and its supported transactions with the “Do no significant harm” Technical Guidance (2021/C58/01). In particular, the Guarantee Agreeement sets out an obligation for the implementing partner to use InvestEU sustainability proofing and to comply with an exclusion list - as outlined in the CID Annex [COM(2021)608 final and ST12319/21 ADD 1]. In accordance with the description of the milestone, the Contribution Agreement ensures that the Guarantee Agreement shall exclude the following list of activities and assets from eligibility (Clause 4.7): o activities and assets related to fossil fuels, including downstream use (with the related exception concerning projects in power and/or heat generation, as well as related transmission and distribution infrastructure, using natural gas); o activities and assets under the EU Emission Trading System (ETS) achieving projected greenhouse gas emissions that are not lower than the relevant benchmarks (with further requirements concerning supported activities achieving projected greenhouse

gas emissions that are not significantly lower than the relevant benchmarks).  The sub-investment is in line with Commission’s Guidance Note of 22 January 2021 (SWD(2021) 12 final) as the Contribution Agreement: i) ensures the implementation of the contribution via the guarantee agreement shall respect the requirements of the RRF Regulation (Clause 7.4); and that ii) it contains all the relevant information regarding the participation of Romania in the InvestEU Programme has been transposed into the Contribution Agreement: the policy objectives of the measure (Clause 11); the State aid dimension (Clause 3.5); the contribution to the Invest EU provisioning (Clause 5); the target amount of finance and investment to be mobilized (Clause 11.2 and Annex 4); the type of support to be deployed mobilized (Clause 11.2 and Annex 4); the targeted beneficiaries and the nature of the mobilized (Clause 11.2 and Annex 4); a timetable for deploying the financial instrument (Clause 11.2 and Annex 4); the name of the InvestEU implementing partner (Clause 13.2); a description of the monitoring

system to report on the investment mobilized through the financial instrument (Clause 16.3).  In accordance with the milestone description, Clause 15.1 stipulates that returns to the financial instrument (that is, revenues generated from the management of assets and allocated to the

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