scholarly journals The European Investment Bank’s ‘Quantum Leap’ to Become the World’s First International Climate Bank

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-195
Author(s):  
Helen Kavvadia

In November 2019, the European Investment Bank (EIB) announced its ‘metamorphosis’ into a ‘Climate Bank.’ Associated with the EU’s Green Deal, presented a month later, the EIB claimed to be the first international climate bank and a front runner in the EU’s priority climate agenda. The EIB is mandated through the treaties to support EU policymakers. However, with its ‘makeover,’ the EIB also announced the launch of a new climate strategy and energy lending policy, ending fossil fuel financing after 2021. It is thus valuable to examine the question of whether the EIB has developed into a policymaker, and if so, how this can be best understood. In exploring this question, this article follows a principal-agent approach, attempting to discern the rational interests behind organisational rhetoric and posits that the EIB’s claimed transformation hints at a type of policymaking activism, exploiting a policy window to serve the EIB’s rational interests in a strained political and market contest. This represents a paradigm shift in the EIB’s institutional behaviour and rhetoric within the EU governance constellation and is, in fact, in this sense a ‘quantum leap’ as suggested by the EIB. However, it remains to be seen if the bank’s metrics will prove a bold departure from their current activity or simply another adaptation to a policy field of intense interest to the EU, as has occurred on several occasions in the past.

IG ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 328-335
Author(s):  
Hartmut Marhold

The European Union (EU) invests huge resources in overcoming the pandemic crisis and does so as a learning system: The Union learned lessons from the previous, the financial, economic and state debt crisis after 2008, in many ways. The EU assumes now definitely the role of an active player in the economy, leaving behind the neoliberal doctrine; she suspends the restrictive budgetary policy, which prevented already in 2008 and the following years adequate solutions; she reshaped the control over its financial aid programmes so that harsh conflict between member states („troika“) are mitigated; the Union further refined the public private partnership mechanisms established unter the aegis of the European Investment Bank (EIB); the European Central Bank (ECB) assumes now a role still disputed after 2008; the flexibility clauses of the Lisbon Treaty, just put into force after 2008, are now extensively applied; and, more than anything else, the Union aims at a change of paradigm by putting the NextGenerationEU programme at the service of sustainable development (enshrined in the Green Deal).


Studia BAS ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (67) ◽  
pp. 133-152
Author(s):  
Kamil Kotliński

The aim of the article is to identify the consequences of Brexit from the point of view of the EU finances. The first section focuses on the share of member states in the EU budget revenue. The author attempted to estimate the additional contribution of each member state. The second section briefly shows in which EU programmes the UK still takes part. The third section concentrates on the adjustment of the shares in the capital of the European Investment Bank and the European Central Bank to the reduced number of shareholders. The next part discusses the budgetary correction mechanisms as a historical remnant of the British rebate. In the last section the author describes the Brexit Adjustment Reserve, which supports regions and sectors most affected by the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union.


Author(s):  
Rocco Luigi Bubbico ◽  
Philipp-Bastian Brutscher ◽  
Debora Revoltella

The first part sets the stage, providing trends on public investment in France, Germany, Italy and Spain. It is preceded by an initial chapter by Rocco Luigi Bubbico, Philipp-Bastian Brutscher and Debora Revoltella from the European Investment Bank (EIB) outlining the experience of Europe as a whole. The picture is as follows: between 2008 and 2016 public investment in the EU declined from 3.4% of GDP to 2.7%. Despite a slight rebound in 2017 and 2018, public investment still stands at only 2.9% of GDP, 15% below its pre-crisis levels. Fiscal consolidation pressure was at the core of such decline in public investment especially in countries that experienced a strong pressure to tighten their budgets. The negative effect of fiscal consolidation was in many cases amplified by a re-prioritization of public outlays away from investment towards current expenditures. Infrastructure investment was disproportionately affected by the decline in public investment. EIB estimates show that overall infrastructure investment declined by about 25% between 2008 and 2016, with the government sector accounting for the lion’s share of this fall. From a sectorial perspective, investment in transport and education infrastructure experienced the strongest decline. The chapter clearly documents that the fall in government infrastructure investment does not reflect a saturation effect, the annual infrastructure investment gap is estimated to be about €155 bn and that construction of new infrastructure seems to continue to produce large positive economic spillover effects. This chapter advises, as a policy lesson, sound project selection: preparation and implementation are the keys to reversing the negative trend in investment activities in the EU, besides overcoming funding constraints. Obviously, to ensure the efficient use of available funds, sound infrastructure governance is also a key factor.


Author(s):  
David Howarth ◽  
Moritz Liebe

The European Investment Bank (EIB) has been at the vanguard of public-private partnership (PPP) promotion and has been followed by most regional development banks (RDB) and many national development banks around the world. EIB activism on the promotion of PPPs can best be understood through the lenses of policy and norm entrepreneurship. Operating strategically, the EIB repeatedly created a ‘policy window’ through which to promote PPPs in different contexts. The EIB developed unrivalled PPP expertise among public bodies globally—with the possible exception of the United Kingdom Treasury. While the EIB was potentially motivated by ‘rationalist’ institutional goals, ideational considerations motivated a small group of British and Irish norm entrepreneurs to promote PPPs. The EIB promoted PPP usage to other RDB through the sharing of expertise and the joint financing of projects.


2021 ◽  
pp. 42-78
Author(s):  
Margot Horspool ◽  
Matthew Humphreys ◽  
Michael Wells-Greco

This chapter discusses the role and composition of the institutions of the EU. These include the European Council, the Council, the Commission, the European Parliament, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and the General Court, the Court of Auditors, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC), the Committee of the Regions (COR), the European Investment Bank and the European Central Bank. This chapter also discusses the EU’s associated bodies or agencies as well as their respective roles and the ways in which they interrelate with the EU institutions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 779-795 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mario Pianta ◽  
Matteo Lucchese ◽  
Leopoldo Nascia

Abstract This article examines the main actions in the field of industrial, investment and innovation policy currently carried out at the European level, focusing on the changes in Europe’s manufacturing production since the 2008 crisis. Current actions by the EU in this field are assessed—including funding programs, fiscal rules, competition policy, the Juncker Plan-InvestEU initiative and the activities of European Investment Bank. The present and potential space for such initiatives is examined in the light of the growing debate on the need for a return to a greater role for public policies in favoring sustainable growth and support investment. In view of the debate on the new EU budget 2021–2017, the scope for a more active industrial policy is discussed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-324
Author(s):  
Bernard GORDON

This article aims to better define the vectors as well as the objectives of French influence at the European Investment Bank (EIB), a European institution created in 1957 which annually mobilises a volume of funding equivalent to the Commission’s budget. For the main part, French influence was exercised individually, through the French members of the Management Committee as well as the French managers of the Bank, in a context where the French Ministry of Finance, which represents the French government at the Bank’s governing bodies, is sometimes reluctant, often inactive, and exceptionally proactive on new initiatives. Based on visions, models and experiences in which France retained a comparative advantage, this influencewas instrumental in the promotion of key policies in three areas: EIB finances and the promotion of a common currency, the financing of small and medium-sized enterprises and innovation and external mandates (Mediterranean and ACP States in particular). Over the past twenty years, successive enlargements, the erosion of France's comparative advantages and the decline of its linguistic and cultural influence have precipitated, as in the European Commission, the loss of an influence which had really started in the mid-1970s.


Author(s):  
Laura Garrido Maza

The EU has been promoting the use of PPPs in order to accelerate the development of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) for ensuring economic, social and territorial cohesion and increasing accessibility throughout the Union. To encourage the use of PPPs, the European Commission has put several financing mechanisms at the disposal of the Member States, including a series of innovative financial instruments developed along with the European Investment Bank. The Bank has in turn played a major role in the promotion and financing of PPPs across the EU. The paper undertakes a review of the main financial instruments developed by the EU that are available to PPPs so as to determinate to what extent the European financial support has been channelled to road projects under that scheme in Spain. On the basis of the results obtained, a multiple regression model has been developed to analyse whether the PPP projects which enjoyed the financial support of the European Union tend to be significantly more successful from an economic point of view. The paper concludes that there is a positive correlation between receiving European financial support and the success of the PPP road projects.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4995/CIT2016.2016.3492


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