Archived press release

Call for European Investment Bank to Serve Europe Better

29 November 2004

Press release from Campagna per la Riforma della Banca Mondiale, CEE Bankwatch Network, FERN, Friends of the Earth International

The European Investment Bank (EIB), the EU's house bank and the biggest multilateral lender in the world, must become legally integrated with its fellow institutions if it is to become a modern and accountable organisation fully capable of contributing to the realisation of EU economic, environmental and social goals. This is the central finding of a new report, "The League of Gentlemen" [1], commissioned by the international EIB campaign coalition to shed light on the legal and operational ties between the EIB and the EU institutions, in particular the European Commission (EC), and to investigate ways in which to strengthen EIB-EC cooperation.

Critics have long argued that the ambiguous legal and operational ties between the EIB and the EU institutions - a legacy of the Bank's Statute laid down by member states in the fifties and re-affirmed in the new Constitution Treaty - permits the EIB to pick and choose from the EU goals without rigorous control. Formal accountability of the EIB has been limited with few effective means for assessing the EIB's activities and effectiveness.

Drawing on in-depth interviews with EU officials (including from the EIB and the EC), the report pinpoints how the EIB's independence and ambiguous legal status has led to it lagging behind the rest of the EU institutions in terms of transparency, inclusiveness and in the implementation of EU social and environmental standards. Such failings undermine the EIB's effectiveness in contributing to achieving EU goals.

The EC must aim to provide the EIB with better policy guidance in its lending operations, paying more attention to rigorous evaluation of both programmes and initiatives mandated to, and carried out in conjunction with, the EIB. The report proposes further that the EC, if it wants its environmental and social goals to be achieved, should use the power described in the Draft Treaty of the European constitution to propose changes to any article of the EIB's Statute to finally pull the Bank into line with the full scope of EU legislation.

Kim Bizzarri, author of the report, commented:

"The EIB can play an important role in implementing EU policies, yet its legal and operational unaccountability to the European institutions imposes limitations on both environmental and social EU policy objectives. European citizens demand a less murky EIB, and the European Council must listen. The European Commission and the European Parliament have a central role to play in soliciting change."

Notes

1) The report "The League of Gentlemen - An investigative report on the
legal and operational relationships tying the European Investment Bank
to the EU institutions" which was commissioned by Campagna per la
Riforma della Banca Mondiale, CEE Bankwatch Network, FERN and Friends of
the Earth International is available at:
www.bankwatch.org/publications/studies/2004/league_gentlemen_11-04.pdf (PDF format)

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Published by Friends of the Earth Trust