ANNEX IISupplementary provisions
ANNEX II Mid-term review and terms of reference for the evaluation of the EIB’s external mandate Mid-term review A substantive mid-term review of EIB external financing will be conducted by 2010. This review, which will be fully informed by an independent external evaluation to be transmitted to the Council, will provide the basis for a decision by Member States whether and to what extent to release any optional mandate topping-up possible lending in the period following 2010 in a second stage, whether to make other amendments to the mandate, and how to ensure maximum value-added and efficiency in the EIB's operations. The Commission will present the mid-term review to the European Parliament and to the Council by 30 June 2010, as the basis for any proposal for the amendment of the mandate. The Council will decide as appropriate after consulting the European Parliament. The framework of the evaluation It will include: a. an evaluation of the EIB's external financing activities. Parts of the evaluation will be conducted in cooperation with the EIB's and the Commission's evaluation departments; b. an assessment of the wider impact of the EIB's external lending on interaction with other IFIs and other sources of finance. The evaluation will be supervised and managed by a steering committee comprising several ‘wise persons’ appointed by the EIB Board of Governors, an EIB and a Commission representative. The steering committee will be chaired by one such ‘wise person’. It will convene no later than during the first semester of 2008. The steering committee will be supported by the EIB's and the Commission's evaluation departments and by external expertise. These external experts will be selected through a Commission tender process. The steering committee will be consulted on the terms of reference and on the criteria for the selection of the external experts. The costs of external experts will then be borne by the Commission and will be covered by the budget line dedicated to the provisioning of the Guarantee Fund. The final evaluation report submitted by the steering committee will draw clear conclusions, based on the information gathered, to base the decision of the mid-term review on whether to release the optional tranche for the remaining term of the mandate and on the regional distribution of any additional financing. The scope of the evaluation The evaluation will cover the previous mandates (2000-2006) and the first years of the 2007-2013 mandate until end 2009. It will examine project financing volumes and disbursements by country as well as technical assistance and risk capital operations. Considering the effects at project, sector, regional and country level, the evaluation will base its conclusions on: a. the in-depth evaluation of the relevance, performance (effectiveness, efficiency and sustainability) of EIB operations against their specific regional objectives as originally set within the relevant EU external policies as well as of their value-added (to be conducted in association with the EIB's evaluation unit and Commission services); b. the assessment of consistency with the relevant EU external policies and strategies and of the additionality and value-added of EIB operations in the first years of the 2007-2013 mandate in the framework of the specific regional objectives in the 2007-2013 mandate and of the corresponding performance indicators to be set by the EIB (to be conducted in association with the EIB's evaluation unit and Commission services). In these assessments, value-added of EIB operations will be measured against three elements: support of EU policy objectives, the quality of the projects themselves and alternative sources of financing. a. analysis of the financial needs of the beneficiaries, their absorption capacity and the availability of other sources of private or public financing for the relevant investments; b. the assessment of the cooperation and coherence of actions between EIB and the Commission; c. the assessment of the cooperation and synergies between the EIB and international and bilateral finance institutions and agencies.