Brussels, 1st December 2014: The European Fund and Asset Management Association (EFAMA) welcomes the political agreement on European Long-term Investment Funds (ELTIFs) reached in Trilogue on 26th November 2014 and views this as a concrete step forward in the long-term investment debate in the EU towards meeting Europes pressing needs for financing growth and long-term development.

For the European asset management industry, the new ELTIFs framework has the potential to unlock important capital and to encourage a shift towards investments in longer term projects.

In order to achieve this goal, the new regulatory framework needs to ensure that the interests and needs of different types of investors are met and that the right incentives are in place for ELTIFs to become a market success.

European asset managers are looking forward to assessing the final text of the agreement reached on Wednesday with regards to the potential it has to align the needs of the EU economy with the needs and the interests of European investors.

Peter De Proft, Director General, EFAMA said: We have long campaigned on the fact that asset managers have an important role to play in the changing landscape of a more capital market based economy. This shift is acknowledged as a tremendously important objective by institutions and regulators worldwide, and the ELTIFs framework has the potential to become an important tool for long-term financing We stand ready to continue our engagement with EU policy-makers towards the important objective of financing growth in Europe.

The ELTIF Regulation aims at directing investments into projects and companies in need of long term financing that have difficulties raising funds on stock markets or securing loans from banks. Funds that want to use the ELTIF label will have to meet a number of requirements under the Regulation.

Once they meet these requirements, funds will be able to market the ELTIFs across all EU Member States.

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For media enquiries, please contact:

Peter De Proft, Director General:

Telephone: +32 (0) 2 513 39 69;

E-mail: info@efama.org

Notes to editors:

About the European Fund and Asset Management Association (EFAMA)

EFAMA is the representative association for the European investment management industry. EFAMA represents through its 27 member associations and 63 corporate members about EUR 17 trillion in assets under management of which EUR 10.6 trillion managed by over 55,000 investment funds at end June 2014. Over 36,000 of these funds were UCITS (Undertakings for Collective Investments in Transferable Securities) funds. For more information about EFAMA, please visit www.efama.org.

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