On the last day of the 140th session of the European Committee of the Region's plenary, which took place from 12-14 October 2020, the President of the Bratislava region, Juraj Droba, who is also a Vice-President of the ECR Group in the CoR spoke on the European Investment Bank's (EIB) funding efforts which are intended to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Mr Droba spoke in response to Werner Hoyer and Lilyana Pavlova, the President and Vice-President of the European Investment Bank who attended the plenary and gave a short presentation on the current efforts of the EIB.

The President of the Bratislava region spoke of his own experience in handling the COVID-19 pandemic and its ramifications. Mr Droba detailed how the regional government of Bratislava assisted local citizens and worked hard to ensure that the lives and livelihoods of citizens could be preserved despite lockdowns and lingering health concerns.

Nevertheless, these economic stimuli and recovery efforts have left the regional budget rather low. Mr Droba pointed out, that many regions are suffering similar dilemma and that the EIB can take a proactive role in assisting regions in recovery efforts, thus taking some of the weight off the shoulders of municipalities, villages and regions.

Across Europe, COVID-19 cases have seen a sharp increase during the autumn of 2020. Many regional governments are now facing an increased demand for public assistance and economic interventions, despite having exhausted much of their respective budgets. Underscoring this urgency, Mr Droba said: "measures to fight the pandemic have depleted the budgets of many regions throughout Europe and I worry even more about the negative economic consequences for regions with the worsening of pandemic and further measures that we have to undertake. Redirected financing toward costly measures has meant that regions are slowly losing their ability to implement long-term development and infrastructure projects."  Mr. Droba stressed that all regions have been impacted by pandemic, but the EU recovery finance is directed only at the national level.

Moreover, since more developed regions like the Bratislava region receive rather a small share of funding via cohesion policy, it will be difficult for such regions to move toward recovery. Mr Droba also pointed that for many regions there is no option to take a loan from the EIB due to a growing incapacity to repay the loans and difficulties even accessing loans due to a critical state of regional finances. Therefore, he suggested the EIB should deploy special financial solutions, which will help the regions to overcome the budget shortfalls and that will not be counted toward public depth.