The European Investment Bank (EIB) has signed a 40 million Euro loan to Eldrive Holding GmbH to install 8,472 electric vehicle (EV) charging stations in Romania, Bulgaria and Lithuania over the next three years.

This agreement is backed by the InvestEU programme, which aims to trigger more than 372 billion Euro in additional investment between 2021 and 2027.

With InvestEU and the EIB’s financial support, Eldrive Holding plans to invest about 146 million Euro to deploy 4,376 new EV charging stations in Romania, 2,575 in Lithuania and 1,530 in Bulgaria, accelerating the infrastructure rollout needed to develop clean transport in these three countries, and supporting the transition to climate neutrality.

“This is a very important project,” said EIB Vice-President Kyriacos Kakouris. “The transport sector is one of the main sources of greenhouse gas emissions. The transition to e-mobility can help reduce them, as well as air pollution. However, a serious shift to electric vehicles cannot take off without the necessary infrastructure. As the EU’s climate bank, the EIB supports new EV charging networks, and I am very pleased that we will be part of modernising transport in Bulgaria, Lithuania and Romania.”    

Eldrive Holding, controlled by Bulgarian investors, already operates over 1 200 EV charging points in the three countries.

“Securing the trust of the EIB is a substantial milestone for Eldrive. It is an important recognition of the resilience of our business strategy, implementation and growth achieved over the past few years. Having the EIB as a partner on this project will help us quickly and effectively expand our network and become one of the leading charging point operators in Europe,” said Eldrive CEO Stefan Spassov.