Evaluation of SME Global Loans in the Enlarged Union

Global Loans dedicated to SMEs were introduced during the 1980s, with an increased focus from 2000 onwards. In a Global Loan, the Bank lends to a Financial Intermediary which makes an equivalent amount of funding available for investment projects which are too small for the Bank to handle directly. For this evaluation, EV carried out a desk review of twenty-five Global Loans spread across sixteen of the current twenty-five Member States. Fifteen of these loans, in fourteen countries, were then selected for individual evaluation. The operations were evaluated against internationally accepted evaluation criteria: Relevance, Efficacy, Efficiency and Sustainability, modified and grouped to meet the particularities of the Global Loan mechanism. The findings and ratings are grouped under the headings of Relevance, Performance of the Financial Intermediaries, and Performance of the EIB Global Loan. In addition, the evaluation considered EIB Value Added and the EIB Project cycle.