Nathalie Berger InvestEU exchange of views BUDG-ECON Committee meeting on 2 September 2026; Defence and cybersecurity expansion under InvestEU

Nathalie Berger InvestEU exchange of views BUDG-ECON Committee meeting on 2 September 2026; Defence and cybersecurity expansion under InvestEU

InvestEU: Exchange of views with Nathalie Berger, Director, Commission’s DG GROW

BRIEFING

EN Authors: Martin HOFLMAYR, Ronny MAZZOCCHI (all EGOV), Francisco Javier PADILLA OLIVARES (BSU) PE 784.058 - August 2026 InvestEU: Exchange of views with Nathalie Berger, Director, Commission’s DG GROW BUDG-ECON Committee meeting on 2 September 2026 The InvestEU Programme is the EU’s flagship budgetary guarantee instrument for mobilising public and private investment in support of internal policy priorities. Ahead of the exchange of views with Nathalie Berger, Director for Competitiveness Coordination at the Commission on 2 September, this briefing recalls how the programme works, sets out the recent legislative and policy changes, presents the latest performance data together with their limitations, and identifies open scrutiny questions - additionality, transparency of individual operations, geographical concentration and the transition to the European Competitiveness Fund - that Members may wish to raise.

1. Governance and functioning The InvestEU programme is the EU’s flagship investment programme, designed as a single, streamlined umbrella framework that integrates various EU financial instruments in key areas like the green transition, innovation and targeted support for SMEs. Recent measures – notably the revised Investment Guidelines and the June 2025 Readiness Omnibus, alongside the Omnibus II simplification package - have broadened InvestEU’s policy remit to support the European defence industrial supply chain, military mobility and cybersecurity, reflecting the EU’s growing focus on strategic autonomy. The structure, functioning and governance of InvestEU are described in detail in this EGOV briefing. Here, we focus only on the key elements. Established under Regulation (EU) 2021/523 as part of the 2021–2027 MFF, the InvestEU programme is centred on an EU budget guarantee to share financial risks with banks and private lenders, leveraging a relatively small amount of public money to mobilise private investment. Initially set at EUR 26.2 billion and provisioned at 40% (EUR 10.5 billion) in the EU budget to cover expected and unexpected losses, the guarantee was expanded by EUR 2.9 billion under Omnibus II to EUR 29.1 billion, of which EUR 11.6 billion is provisioned. The same 40 % provisioning rate is applied regardless of the risk profile of the operation. While this protects the EU budget, it also limits the capacity to back the highest- risk, most additional projects, and proposals to move towards dynamic provisioning - or to lower the statistical confidence level used to size the buffer - have been a feature of the scrutiny debate. In terms of operational logic, the programme uses the EU guarantee to enhance the risk-sharing capacity of implementing partners, with the EIB Group managing 75 % of the guarantee and various national promotional banks and international financial institutions handling the remaining 25 %. If a loan defaults or an investment performs poorly, the EU guarantee covers an agreed share of the resulting loss, reducing the CONTENTS

Governance and functioning 2. Mobilisation Figures and Distribution 3. Performance and Scrutiny 4. InvestEU and the upcoming Multiannual Financial Framework 5. Conclusion

ECTI | Economic Governance and EMU Scrutiny Unit BUDG | Budgetary Support Unit

2 PE 784.058 financial risk for the implementing partners. This allows them to provide financing on more favourable terms

• such as lower interest rates, less collateral, longer repayment periods - or to support projects and businesses that might otherwise be considered too risky. The programme is divided into four policy windows0F1: • Sustainable Infrastructure, which carries high climate and environmental targets (40 % of guarantees); • Research, Innovation and Digitisation (21 % of guarantees); • the SME window for enhancing access to finance for smaller businesses (32 % of guarantees); • and the Social Investment and Skills window (7 % of guarantees). Its governance structure is built upon three main pillars: • A Steering Board that provides strategic and operational guidance; • An independent Investment Committee responsible for approving the use of the EU guarantee for specific operations; • An advisory board that offers technical expertise from Member States and other EU bodies; The European Parliament participates in this structure through a non-voting expert who sits on the Steering Board to monitor performance and implementation. In addition, the Chair of the Steering Board reports to the competent committees at regular public meetings - the setting for which this briefing is prepared - and is required to reply to formal parliamentary questions within five weeks (see Article 27 InvestEU). Alongside the guarantee, the programme runs two supporting pillars: the InvestEU Advisory Hub, which helps make projects bankable, and the InvestEU Portal, a matchmaking platform. The Portal has so far had limited impact, and the Omnibus II amendment directed no additional resources to either pillar, a gap worth noting when weighing whether the programme’s non-financial support is keeping pace with its financing ambitions. Like its predecessor, the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), InvestEU is not conceived as a permanent instrument: its legal basis and financial envelope are currently limited to the 2021–2027 MFF period. Any continuation beyond 2027 would therefore require a new decision by the EU institutions, including new legislative action and agreement on the programme’s future financial envelope.

2. Mobilisation Figures and Distribution As outlined above, the Omnibus II Regulation sees a EUR 2.9 billion increase of the EU to EUR 29.1 billion, which increased the provisioning target of 40 % to EUR 11.5 billion. The amended regulation states that this amount is underpinned by the additional expected reflows of EUR 1.2 billion from resources that will become available under EFSI and other legacy instruments (Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) Debt Instrument and InnovFin Debt Facility). It is estimated that, thanks to this increased guarantee envelope, around EUR 55 billion in additional investment could be mobilised. The latest total provisioning of the InvestEU guarantee for the 2021-2027 period, resulting from the financial programming update after 2026 budget adoption, amounts to EUR 10.1 billion (Table 1). This amount does not yet include the assigned revenue for 2025- 2027 as it is not yet available (see also section on assigned revenues below).1F2

1 The figures mentioned are taken from the InvestEU website, specifically the InvestEU Map and Indicators. The cut-off date for the data presented there is 31 December 2025. 2 It should be noted that InvestEU is a beneficiary of the mechanism for programme-specific adjustments under Article 5 of the MFF Regulation. These adjustments are financed through an amount equivalent to competition fines accruing in the previous year, with a minimum and a maximum annual amount.

InvestEU: Exchange of views with Nathalie Berger, Director, Commission’s DG GROW PE 784.058 3 According to the latest InvestEU Steering Board minutes from June 2026, the InvestEU Fund has so far allocated € 29.04 billion in EU guarantees across 18 implementing partners, a figure that encompasses the EU and Member State compartments, top-up commitments, and EFTA contributions. According to the Commission2F3, at the end of 2025, implementing partners had approved EUR 83.9 billion of operations, of which EUR 57.9 billion had been signed and EUR 13.6 billion disbursed. The signed operations were backed by EUR 17.6 billion of EU guarantee. As illustrated in Table 1 and Figure 1 below, the financial programming3F4 provides for a EUR 200.6 million reduction in commitment appropriations for InvestEU in 2027, on the assumption that reflows from legacy instruments and EFSI surplus provisioning will finance part of the provisioning requirement as detailed above. If these assigned revenues are lower than anticipated, additional commitment appropriations may be needed to meet the provisioning target. The approved guarantee has been distributed across the four policy windows as follows: EUR 11.64 billion (40 %), for sustainable infrastructure, EUR 9.41 billion for SMEs (32 %), EUR 6.01 billion for research, innovation and digitisation (21 %), and EUR 2.02 billion for social investment and skills (7 %). In terms of financing operations actually signed, sustainable infrastructure accounted for EUR 26.26 billion, SMEs and small mid-caps for EUR 19.70 billion, research, innovation and digitisation for EUR 7.31 billion, and social investment and skills for EUR 4.59 billion. As for the thematic distribution, the energy sector was the largest eligible area (34%), followed by financing for SMEs and small mid-caps (14%), and mobility projects (12%). Geographically, InvestEU had reached all 27 Member States by the end of 2025. Italy, Spain, Portugal, France and Germany were the largest beneficiaries in absolute signed financing, whereas Portugal, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania and Latvia ranked highest relative to GDP. Approximately EUR 12 billion of multi-country operations cannot, however, be attributed to an individual country and is excluded from the country breakdown. Implementing partners other than the EIB Group indicated that they have mobilised over EUR 39 billion in investment, with 67 % of their allocated guarantee approved and 48 % signed4F5. The financial risk figures have a narrower perimeter5F6. The EUR 14.542 billion used in the Commission’s provisioning assessment is neither the total InvestEU guarantee nor the volume of supported investment. It is the “total available guarantee amount signed by counterparts” used as the exposure measure for the risk calculation, comprising EUR 6.554 billion of debt and EUR 7.988 billion of equity and other non-debt exposure, after taking account of guarantee reductions, calls and released amounts. The Commission estimates a pre-diversification lifetime risk of EUR 9.034 billion and deducts a EUR 2.212 billion diversification effect, producing a lifetime Value-at-Risk6F7 of EUR 6.822 billion at a 95 % confidence level, or 46.9 % of the EUR 14.542 billion exposure. The Common Provisioning Fund nevertheless held EUR 7.128 billion for InvestEU at the end of 2025, equivalent to a de facto provisioning rate of approximately 49 %. InvestEU had generated cumulative guarantee revenues of EUR 148.9 million and cumulative net guarantee calls of EUR 195.9 million. These realised amounts remain small relative to the exposure, but the portfolio is still ramping up and many losses may materialise only later. Moreover, the published assessment provides only a high-level description of the credit risk model and does not disclose

3 European Commission, Draft General Budget 2027 – Working Document XI: Budgetary Guarantees and Contingent Liabilities, COM(2026) 300, pp. 6 and 27 and InvestEU Steering Board, Minutes of the meeting held on 9 June 2026, SB/2026/04, p. 3. 4 The financial programming provides a planning framework for the EU budget and is the basis for the draft budget, but changes to amounts for EU budget programmes may be agreed during the annual budgetary procedure (n-1). 5 The figures mentioned in the paragraph come from the following documents: European Commission, Draft General Budget of the European Union for the Financial Year 2027 – Working Document Part XI: Budgetary Guarantees and Contingent Liabilities, COM(2026) 300, p. 28 and footnote 24; InvestEU Steering Board, Minutes of the meeting held on 9 June 2026, SB/2026/04, pp. 2–3; European Commission, InvestEU map and indicators, “Eligible areas: volume