EU Global Loans

To provide financing in other European countries, KfW Group grants global loans to partner banks in Europe that enable them to extend medium and long-term investment loans to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and to municipalities with a focus on environmental and climate protection. Global loans are granted in the context of KfW's cooperation with the European Commission or in the context of KfW's SME support scheme.

KfW Group has been implementing financing facilities in Central and Eastern Europe in cooperation with the EU Commission and the Council of Europe Development Bank (CEB) since the year 2000. Under this scheme, global loans were combined with grants from the EU Commission and utilized for investments of SMEs and municipalities with special emphasis on energy efficiency. In the future KfW Group will focus its activities in this context on the implementation of the EU financing facility ELENA (European Local Energy Assistance) which aims at supporting municipalities to implement the “20-20-20” initiative of European Union. ELENA facilitates small and medium sized investment projects of municipalities on local or regional level in the fields of energy efficiency or renewable energies.