---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 16 Nov 1997 19:47:16 +0100 GMT From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: EIB ANNOUNCES FIRST EU "JOBS SUMMIT" LOANS Resent-Date: Sun, 16 Nov 1997 19:47:30 GMT Resent-From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Resent-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 14Nov97 BELGIUM: EIB ANNOUNCES FIRST EU "JOBS SUMMIT" LOANS. BRUSSELS, Nov 14 (Reuters) - The European Investment Bank announced on Friday the first loans it will make as part of an employment-friendly package due to be endorsed by European Union leaders at their November 21 Luxembourg Jobs Summit. The EIB, the EU's development bank and the world's largest multilateral lender and borrower, said it would lend Dutch Bank Nederlandse Gemeenten 45 million Ecus for on-lending to projects in the health and education sector. The bank had also lent 196 million Ecus for five university campus projects in Valencia, Spain, an EIB spokesman said. EU leaders at their Amsterdam Summit in June asked the EIB to come up with new ways to help in the bloc's fight against unemployment. Extending the bank's lending mandate to the health, education and the urban environment sectors was one of the solutions chosen, because of the large numbers of people they employ. EU finance ministers, the EIB's governors, have also cleared the bank to set aside one billion Ecus over three years from its reserve of surplus profits to back riskier lending to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). No loans under this so-called "special window" have yet been made, but some were in the pipeline, the spokesman said. The bank would next week announce two more "global loans" to banks in France and Belgium for on-lending to projects likely to generate a large number of jobs. Other planned projects represented more than one billion Ecus in additional finance, he said. During EU leaders' Jobs Summit on Thursday and Friday, the bank would also formally set up a 125-million-Ecus European Technology Fund (ETF), which will provide venture capital to young European companies, he added. (c) Reuters Limited 1997 REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
