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Collaboration between Cassa Depositi Group and the European Investment Bank (EIB) gave birth to €600 million (US$630 million) in financing to enlarge a strategically important motorway connecting Venice and Trieste.

The Piattaforma Grandi Infrastrutture (Large Infrastructure Platform) will help Autovia Venete SpA, a motorway concessionaire, add a third lane on a 95 km stretch of the A4 autostrada. 

CDP and the EIB together extended two €300 million (US$317 million) lines of credit. The latter has the guarantee of the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), commonly known as the Juncker Plan. The operation will enable investments of around €950 million and guarantee completion by 2022

Autovie Venete is the concessionaire of several motorway sections in northeast Italy including the A4 Venice-Trieste, the A28 Portogruaro-Pordenone-Conegliano and the A34 Villesse Gorizia, contributing to economic and social development of the territory in which it operates. With CDP and EIB support, the company will complete the construction of the third lane of the A4 Venice-Trieste in the stretch from Quarto d'Altino (near Venice) in Villesse (Gorizia), for a total of 95 km, work given the legal status of strategic infrastructure of major national interest.

The third lane is part of a motorway of the European transport network "Trans-European Networks - Transport" (TEN-T), and the so-called Corridor V, the network that will link Barcelona to Kiev via Trieste, Ljubljana and Budapest. The concession is a gateway for Italian goods to Slovenia, the Balkans and Eastern Europe.

The involvement of CDP and the EIB ensures long-term funding investments deemed urgent given an emergency traffic situation had arisen on the A4, in a context of regulatory uncertainty because of the imminent expiry of the concession in place (31 March 2017).

CDP Chief Business Officer Antonella Baldino, said:

"We are delighted to have been part of the team that has completed the financing for investments in this important infrastructure. It’s strategically important and highly significant as a factor of competitiveness of the region Friuli Venezia Giulia, and the whole our country, as a concrete realization of an integration at European level. With the completion of the investment financing for the third lane of the A4, begins the Piattaforma Grandi Infrastrutture promoted by CDP and the EIB under the Junker Plan."