Report on guarantees covered by the general budget – Situation at 31 December 2016

The objective of this report is to monitor the credit risks borne by the EU budget resulting from the guarantees given and the lending operations implemented directly by the European Union or indirectly through the guarantee granted for EIB financing projects outside the Union. The report is submitted pursuant to Article 149 of the Financial Regulation which requires the Commission to report annually to the European Parliament and to the Council on EU budget guarantees and the corresponding risks.

The report is structured as follows: Section 2 recalls the key features of the operations guaranteed by the EU budget; several other additional crisis management mechanisms, which do not imply any risk for the EU budget, are also presented. Section 3 lays out the evolution of the guaranteed operations. Section 4 highlights the main risks covered by the EU budget. Section 5 outlines the activation of the guarantees and the evolution of the Guarantee Fund for external actions ("the Fund") while section 6 outlines the evolution of the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI).

A Commission Staff Working Document (SWD) complements this report with a set of detailed tables and explanatory notes. It also provides a macroeconomic analysis of the countries benefitting from EU loans and/or guarantees, representing the bulk of the exposure of the Fund.

EUR-Lex: SWD(2017)435: Commission Staff Working Document accompanying the report http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=SWD:2017:435:FIN

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