EIB provides EUR 30 million loan for renewal of Palma de Mallorca’s urban bus fleet under Juncker Plan
Palma de Mallorca’s urban buses will start being replaced this year with new, more modern, safer, more comfortable and less polluting vehicles. The European Investment Bank (EIB) has signed an agreement under the Juncker Plan with Empresa Municipal de Transportes (EMT) of Palma whereby it will provide a EUR 30 million loan for replacing the company’s existing urban buses (all diesel and mostly over 14 years old) with new cleaner vehicles powered by compressed natural gas (CNG).
The EIB loan will also finance the construction of a new CNG refuelling station and the upgrading of EMT’s IT, fleet management and ticketing systems.
The agreement was signed in Palma today by the EIB's director of operations in Spain and Portugal, Birthe Bruhn-Leon, and EMT’s manager, Mateu Marcus, in a ceremony attended by Palma’s mayor Antoni Noguera and the mobility councillor, Joan Ferrer. The project is supported by the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), the core of the European Commission's Investment Plan for Europe, also known as the Juncker Plan.
By financing this project, the EIB will help to reduce pollutant emissions in Mallorca’s capital. At the same time, the new urban bus fleet will serve to increase transport capacity: some of the new vehicles, especially those employed on the busiest routes, will be longer than existing buses (18 metres rather than 12 metres) and contain more seats. With an average of 40 million passengers a year, EMT is Mallorca’s biggest public transport company.
Violeta Bulc, European Commissioner for Transport, said: "This project is yet another illustration that the Juncker Plan is bringing tangible results for Europeans… and for the environment! These new buses will improve the daily lives of commuters, stimulate the local economy and put Palma de Mallorca at the forefront of the transition to low-emission mobility. I hope that this success will encourage many other European cities to follow suit."
Today’s agreement is the second signed by the EIB under its new Cleaner Transport Facility. The support of the Investment Plan for Europe has enabled the EIB to provide the long-term financing needed to ensure that the project is implemented on schedule.
The renewal of the bus fleet will also bring economic benefits by reducing operating and maintenance costs. The launch of the new vehicles will begin this year and continue until 2023. The project will create 330 jobs during the implementation phase.
Background
The European Investment Bank (EIB) is the long-term lending institution of the European Union owned by its Member States. It makes long-term finance available for sound investment in order to contribute towards EU policy goals.
The Investment Plan for Europe, known as the “Juncker Plan”, is one of the European Commission’s top priorities. It focuses on boosting investment to generate jobs and growth by making smarter use of new and existing financial resources, removing obstacles to investment, and providing visibility and technical assistance to investment projects.
The European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI) is the main pillar of the Juncker Plan and provides first loss guarantees, enabling the EIB to invest in more projects that often come with greater risks. EFSI has already yielded tangible results. The projects and agreements approved for financing under EFSI are expected to mobilise more than EUR 256bn in investment and support almost 539 000 SMEs in the 28 Member States.
More information on the results of the Investment Plan for Europe is available here.
The Cleaner Transport Facility (CTF) was launched in 2016 by the European Commission and the EIB to curb transport emissions and help finance cleaner transport. It supports the deployment of alternatively fuelled vehicles, particularly privately operated fleets (e.g. taxis fleets or other service providers), and of charging infrastructure on Europe's strategic transport network. The CTF uses existing mechanisms and instruments including, but not limited to, the European Fund for Strategic Investments and the Connecting Europe Facility.