EIB President Nadia Calviño delivered the keynote speech at the EIB Group Forum 2024. She highlighted the key role the EIB Group has in tackling challenges such as the energy transition, digitalisation and resilience for critical technologies and raw materials. President Calviño also shared findings from the EIB Investment Report.

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I am delighted to be here today with you, the key stakeholders of the European Investment Bank Group. I would like to share some thoughts about the solutions to current challenges facing Europe and the world and how the EIB Group can and will contribute to tackling those challenges.

We have been through a testing few years. The pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the energy price shock that followed. These events put Europe under tremendous strain.

But the impact has been very different to what many people predicted.  

There has been a strong recovery, after the pandemic, rich in employment, with financial stability, solvent and profitable firms.  

This is a remarkable contrast to past crises. We only need to think back to the great recession, the sovereign debt crisis. It is testimony to the efficiency of the EU’s institutional evolution over the last decade.

  • The key difference this time, has not only been the massive size of public intervention. It was the remarkable coordination of our actions to face those challenges. Europe acted as one. Together, we put in place SURE, the instrument to try to support Member States protecting jobs, the European Guarantee Fund, where the EIB Group has played a key role, the Next Generation EU investment and reform programme. So, we were able to protect jobs, businesses, family households, revenues and the economy. In general, to avoid structural scarring and to allow for this very strong recovery of investment.
  • We worked together on common procurement, first to ensure access to vaccines, and then to manage gas supplies.
  • We demonstrated again and again our common resolve to support Ukraine in the face of  the invasion, only very recently we had another example of this commitment and unity.
  • And we have put in place the building blocks to succeed in the net-zero transition, through the Green Deal, REPowerEU and all the different instruments that have been deployed.

This is the main conclusion of the European Investment Bank’s Investment Report, our flagship annual publication, published today. And it shows in very clear terms:

  • The recovery has been fast.
  • Public and corporate investment has remained remarkably resilient, supporting economic transformation, despite higher energy and borrowing costs.
  • European firms are strongly committed and pushing ahead with digitalisation. Around 70% of them now use some advanced digital technology.
  • And also, the jump in those companies that are investing in energy efficiency has increased to 51% of the companies since 2021, when it was 37%. I think this is a remarkable development.

The crisis did not bite as deeply as some were expecting, because of the coordinated European response. That’s good news, and a lesson for the future.

As economic growth slows, and we are facing increasingly complex geopolitical challenges, we are also facing the need to fill the gap for the twin green and digital transitions, the face the challenge of the roll-back of globalisation, unfavourable demographics, and a rising social divide in so many of our societies. It is more important than ever that we unite our forces. That we rise to the challenge together. And the European Investment Bank can and will have an important role in catalysing and finding solutions to these challenges. We obviously can and are playing a counter-cyclical role because we are supporting and sustaining investment in the context of higher interest rates and slowing down of demand within the EU and in global terms.

Sustained investment will be crucial to accelerate the transition, also to step up innovation and the adoption of new technologies, to ensure our physical and economic security and to strengthen supply-chain resilience for critical technologies and raw materials. All these things are essential to Europe’s present and its future – for our competitiveness and the well-being of European citizens. And they require investments. Not only investments in technologies, in the development of new techniques and the decarbonisation of our industries. We also need to invest in our social infrastructures, education and training, health and affordable housing, especially in weaker regions. There are very strong and good reasons to put a lot of emphasis on cohesion policy, and the cohesion angle of our activities within the European Investment Bank Group.

And we can build on our strengths. We have outstanding technical skills. The degree of excellence at the Bank, that has been achieved and expertise when it comes to large infrastructure, on the green transition are providing a strong reassurance, and a catalytic role. When the European Investment Bank goes into an investment, it really brings so many other public and private investors along.

Another of our key strengths is our strong triple A – plus I would say because of our very strong capital position, our ability to leverage capital and provide innovative financing, to catalyse change. The European Investment Fund is a very creative subsidiary , a very useful tool to devise the innovative financing we need to support SME’s,  to scale up startups.

Our excellent performance in 2023 provides a solid basis for the future.

Financing signed last year, close to €88 billion, is expected to mobilise around €320 billion in investment. That will reach 400 000 companies, supporting 5.4 million jobs. This is material and a very strong starting point for us when we are looking forward.

€20 billion euros of these investments went to the EU’s small and medium-sized businesses, which are the backbone of our economy. And I really wanted to share this number with you because sometimes when we think about the flagship projects, we are thinking about the very large players, but the Group is playing a very important role in supporting SMEs. Our research indicates that three years after they received EIB-backed loans, small and medium-sized businesses – and we analysed 97 000 of them – employed 8% more people than comparable firms. The venture debt we provide to large start-ups helps them crowd-in and have two and a half times more debt financing than their peers. And that means they can grow faster.

That is impact, and those numbers are giving us self confidence in our ability to do more and to do it faster going forward.

We are the EU climate bank. Well over half of our financing last year – a record €49 billion – was deployed for climate action and environmental sustainability. This is €10 billion more than the previous year. We are on track to deliver on our promise of supporting €1 trillion of investment in the green transition by the end of the decade.

No need to explain how this investment is essential for Europe to eliminate our dependence and ensure cheap, reliable, renewable energy for all of us.

We also had a strong activity to support European priorities outside the EU, contributing to global endeavours, like the financing of vaccine production facilities in Africa, and also specific investment projects, from the metro of Agra, which will be inaugurated in the coming days, to financial support to Ukraine. These build sustainable, resilient and more prosperous economies throughout the world, but, and this is very important too, they are key to real North-South partnerships in a time of geographic stress and polarisation.

These excellent results should give us confidence when looking ahead.

Take the green transition. Europe has consistently been leading this debate. We continue to have a technological advantage. The EIB has a widely recognised excellence in this area and a consolidated brand as The Climate Bank. In these first four weeks of 2024 alone we have already signed or approved ground-breaking deals in green hydrogen, circular battery and solar panel production and decarbonisation of heavy industries.

The development of Europe’s green taxonomy and the green bond market show that the European standards can become global standards and this is the foundation for a green economy that can be one that also generates good quality jobs and better lives for our citizens.  

It is a no brainer that we must seize this opportunity and join our forces to ensure a successful and fair transition that creates good quality jobs today and a better world for future generations, and has also a local impact, so it benefits societies and communities throughout the whole EU.

I can make a similar point about digitalisation and technological innovation, scaling up of startups in disruptive technologies. I could dissect and analyse each one of our challenges and I would come to the same conclusion, which is that the European Investment Bank Group will and can do more. And partnering with others is obvious if we want to succeed.

A final word on partnerships. This has been one of my top priorities, since I took the job at the here at the EIB Group - closer cooperation and engagement with the European Commission and the European Parliament, as well as other institutions, with our shareholders, the EU Member States, with national and multilateral development banks, with our international partners, private sector and civil society.

Working together, we make a difference. We make things happen.

And that is why this EIB Forum is so important. It is an opportunity for us to talk to each other, to listen to each other, to think together, to bring together all our capacities to respond to current challenges. Let me close on this positive note because already what I’m hearing at the Forum is giving me a lot of really useful insights and contributions in designing our future strategy - getting it right and ensuring when we meet next year and look back we realise how transformative this debate was and how much it helped for us together to tackle Europe’s challenges.

Thank you