Across Europe, PPP shares a number of common principles, notably the importance of efficient risk allocation and, through this, enhanced value for money for the public sector. However, there is no single organisational model for PPP across Europe. The PPP model adopted by a given country will reflect that country's particular economic, political and legal context-and PPP has shown itself to be extremely flexible in responding to these different contexts. For this reason, the EIB avoids a dogmatic definition, recognising instead that the PPP can embrace a wide range of arrangements for sharing risks and responsibilities between the public and private sectors.
UK PPPs are distinct in important respects from the approaches adopted in other EU countries with major PPP programmes. Key features of the UK context are, for example, its common law legal framework, the sophistication of its financial markets (the UK is, for example, the only country in Europe to have drawn extensively on the capital markets as a means of funding PPP), the experience of the public sector in PPP procurement, but also the relative weakness (in terms of balance sheet strength) of much of its contractor sector. Caution should be exercised, therefore, in any attempt to transplant the models of other countries.
Notwithstanding the challenges of the current financing market, the financial crisis has led to a renewed interest in PPP models. This reflects not only an appreciation of the role that efficient infrastructure investment can play in promoting economic growth but also the reduced capacity of governments to finance these investments directly due to their increased indebtedness. This has resulted in a new emphasis from the Commission on PPPs as a component of its anti-crisis strategy and the Commission is expected to publish shortly proposals on mobilising private finance and PPP in the context of the European Economic Recovery Plan.