30.5.2017

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

L 139/78

(1)

Regulation (EU) 2015/1017 entrusts the Commission with the responsibility to create, with the support of the European Investment Bank (EIB), a European Investment Project Portal (EIPP). The EIPP is a publicly available web portal of investment projects which acts as a platform to promote projects to potential investors worldwide.

(2)

The specifications of the EIPP have been set out in Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2016/1942 (2).

(3)

Experience gained in managing the EIPP indicates that certain provisions should be amended, especially to attract more projects from smaller project promoters, SMEs and mid-caps, in line with the objective of the European Union to support the SMEs and entrepreneurship. Therefore the minimum project cost should be lowered from EUR 5 million to EUR 1 million.

(4)

To increase the attractiveness of the EIPP and to alleviate the charge supported by project promoters in a non-discriminatory manner and thus to give the EIPP an impetus for a higher number of published projects, the application processing fee should not be charged to any project promoters. The project screening set out in Section 3 of the Annex to Implementing Decision (EU) 2016/1942 should remain in place to ensure the publication of quality projects on the EIPP,

(1)

In Article 2, point (a) is replaced by the following:

(2)

Article 3 is replaced by the following:

‘楢rticle 3

No application processing fee shall be charged.‘�

(3)

Section 4 of the Annex is deleted.