Hongaars voorzitterschap doet voorstel om beleid Europese Investeringsbank meer in lijn te brengen met buitenlands beleid (en)

On Tuesday evening, after having conducted 12 trilogue meetings, negotiators from the European Parliament and the Hungarian Presidency of the Council of the EU agreed on a compromise to update and streamline the operations of the European Investment Bank in order to bring it closer in line with the EU’s foreign policy activities.

The EIB is the financing arm of the European Union and as such it plays a key role in supporting stability and nation building in the EU’s partner countries. Recent events in North Africa and in Eastern Europe have demonstrated the need to make EIB activities more responsive to political developments, more conducive to favorable political change and more tangible for the people living in the areas concerned.

The decision yesterday opens the way to strengthen the positive influence of EIB operations specifically in the Mediterranean region by offering an additional EUR1bln of loan guarantees. It also tops-up the guarantees available for pre-accession funding by EUR400mln, allowing those operations to continue.

The EIB will also have to consider the direct impact of its operations on the well-being of the people living in the areas concerned, by developing indicators and monitoring systems to frame the development aspects of its lending activities. In practice this means that the Bank will consider how its specific projects, such as infrastructure development, can contribute to fighting poverty and enhancing social inclusion.

Finally, the Commission will be able to modify the list of countries eligible for EIB lending more simply, taking into account the views of the Parliament and the Council. This will make it possible to quickly adjust EIB lending depending on the performance of the governments concerned in upholding shared democratic values, in line with the moral underpinnings of our foreign policy.

Next steps: the COBU committee is expected to vote on the compromise on Monday (27/06). Thereafter the Coreper will have to approve the agreement, too before the legal and linguistic work can start (lasting for 4—6 weeks). The final text is expected to be ready by the end of July, with the EP Plenary ad the Council expected to finally pass it by end of September.