Linking EIB Global and Global Gateway at the European Development Days #EDD22

On 21^st and 22^nd of June, the EIB attended the European Development Days organised by the European Commission under the theme “Global Gateway: building sustainable partnerships for a connected world.”

The delegation led by President Hoyer, including Vice-Presidents Ambroise Fayolle and Ricardo Mourinho, EIB Global’s Deputy Managing Director, Markus Berndt, EIB Global's Director of Lending in Africa, Caribbean, Pacific, Asia and Latin America, Maria-Shaw Barragan, participated in debates and met with political leaders to discuss priority investment to support green and digital transition.

In his keynote speech delivered at the opening ceremony, President Hoyer stressed that: “the war in Ukraine is the strongest possible argument to green our economies and accelerate our independence from fossil fuels”. He also reaffirmed EIB’s commitment to step-up Team Europe investments around the world at a high-level panel focusing on ‘Sustainable Finance at the heart of Global Gateway’.

President Hoyer, Vice-President Fayolle and Vice-President Mourinho met with the leaders and their delegations from Senegal, Ghana, Mauritania, Namibia, Cabo Verde, Belize and Tajikistan, to strengthen partnerships and discuss possible new projects that can increase connectivity and resilience to face global challenges.

Vice-President Fayolle joined the ‘European architecture for development, delivering joint inclusive responses to the climate crisis’ event to discuss how European development actors can strengthen their partnership to reach development and climate goals worldwide. “Climate change is a global challenge, both inside and outside the European Union. If we want to have a successful climate change transition, we need to take into account the concept of Just Transition, otherwise we would fail”, he told the audience.

Vice-President Ricardo Mourinho spoke at a special event dedicated to ‘Economic and Investment Plans in EU’s neighbouring regions’ where he outlined EIB’s climate ambitions and in particular the bank’s support for sustainable transport and connectivity. He also explained how the EIB is supporting SMEs to go green and digital. ‘We are going from crisis to crisis, the EU has learned a lot on how to deliver liquidity. We need to repurpose loans to support working capital. Helping SMEs is key as they are the backbone of most economies and the most fragile during crisis”, he said.

Markus Berndt attended the EIB Lunch Dialogue dedicated to EIB Global, where he stated: “We want to work together and, more importantly, we want to deliver. We want to bring our lending, blending and advising capacity to a new scale, together with our peer institutions”.

Maria Shaw Barragan joined a debate to discuss how to achieve coherent investment in inter-connected cities. “As the EU Bank, we provide sustainable solutions to cities: our joint initiative with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), Financing Energy for Low-carbon Investment – Cities Advisory Facility (FELICITY), offers advisory services for cities to become greener”, she said.

Together with the European Commission, EIB Global announced the Caribbean Investment Facility that will support critical water, sanitation and clean ocean projects in the Caribbean, and a new €18.4 million loan to the Republic of Maldives, backed by the EU, to increase resilience to pandemics and efficiency of the health sector.

Check out The EIB at the European Development Days 2022