Just a few weeks ago, Nadia Calviño took over the presidency of the European Investment Bank (EIB). This provides an opportune moment to assess whether the institution is strategically addressing the pressing needs of the European public.
Calviño’s appointment comes at a critical time for the world's largest multilateral lender. Against a backdrop of climate breakdown, cost of living crisis, and the pursuit of neo-colonial policies aimed at extracting and securing competitive raw materials supply chains from the Global South, the EIB has a huge untapped potential to steer our economies towards fairness, equity and sustainability.
As EU economic and financial affairs ministers meet today, 15 CSOs call on the EIB’s President to lead the EIB to a sustainable and socially responsible path in a letter to Bank. Key challenges and issues the EIB should address range from phasing out support for fossil fuel companies, to strengthening its due diligence and human rights assessment processes, and to putting projects with high social benefits at the heart of its operations. In all this, the President should also democratise the Bank’s governance structures, and reject any proposals to expand finance for the defence sector.
Only by acting on these points can the EIB effectively use its economic power to support just societies with a transformative public finance agenda.
