European Investment Bank in support of urban rehabilitation

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The European Investment Bank has said that Portugal can rely on its support to develop financial assistance instruments for rehabilitation and urban revitalisation.

Desmond Gardner, a member of the EIB was in Lisbon on Thursday last week at the presentation of the programme IFFRU 2020 Portugal.
The IFFRU (Urban Rehabilitation Incentives Programme) is a financial instrument for the rehabilitation and revitalisation of urban areas which helps to finance projects of this nature and was designed by the Portuguese Government with the support of the European Union. From September the financial entities selected will start to study applications for financing for urban rehabilitation projects.
“Portugal can count on the support of the European Investment Bank to continue developing financial assistance instruments” he said, adding that the programme was important because it focused on urban development, but also because it “concerned people and cities, also contributing to reducing the impact of climate change, improving sustainability and greater mobility.”
Gardener praised the way that Portugal had succeeded in creating “a single national fund” with the capacity to “join forces from both the private and public sectors as well as government bodies.”
For the future, he stressed that the EIB would continue to develop more technological and mobility instruments and that IFFRU 2200 “is an important platform for this future.” “We’re ready to play our part from our side,” he said.
These instruments come together within the URBIS platform that is a new dedicated urban advisory platform within the EIAH, developed by the European Commission in partnership with the EIB. Urbis was launched in November 2017 and is already supporting 16 projects in sectors as diverse as social outcomes investing and funding municipal development in smaller cities.
Desmond Gardner is a Financial Instruments Advisor at the European Investment Bank. He is a member of the fi-compass advisory team which seeks to support managing authorities and other stakeholders with the implementation of financial instruments under the European Structural Investment Funds.