EIB President Nadia Calviño’s opening speech at event Scaling up support on affordable and sustainable housing in the EU.
Good afternoon, dear colleagues, dear friends.
It is a great pleasure to welcome you to this first [housing] event to kick off a work stream that is one of the top priorities for the European Investment Bank Group, and I think it is one of the top priorities for European citizens, for companies, for European governments: certainly in the last years, due to the increasing cost of the building industry and also because of the gap between the existing stock and the needs coming from our commitments in climate action.
Housing is undoubtedly a top priority for European citizens, for governments, and for European institutions, as shown by the fact that today, as we were preparing for this event, president von der Leyen, in her speech at the European Parliament (and we just learned that she has certainly got very strong support by the European Parliament), did put housing as one of the priorities to be addressed.
In the next commission mandate, she will appoint a European commissioner. She will launch a first-ever European affordable housing plan in close partnership with European Investment Bank Group. And she wants to launch a pan-European investment platform for affordable and sustainable housing to attract more public and private investment in this area.
This is an extremely timely meeting, and I am very happy to see that we have gathered more than 300 participants, physically a few of you, but many online from national ministries, finance ministries, housing ministries, national promotional banks, city representatives, housing associations, construction industry experts, and of course our partners at the European Commission.
Our partnership is absolutely essential to make sure that the legislative tracks and the financing tracks are fully aligned to respond to this massive challenge. You will be discussing today examples, national programmes, ideas. I hope that we will come out of this meeting with a number of ideas on how we can build this pan-European platform and how we can bridge the investment gap. And I'm also sure that there are many who will put on the table their experience and their estimates of the challenge for the European economy.
Half of the homes in Europe were built before 1980; massive investments are needed for energy efficiency; only 5% of the building stock in Europe has been renovated. For renovation alone, the investment needs are estimated at 275 billion euros per year just to deal with the necessary renovations and the retrofitting of the existing housing stock to ensure better insulation, heating systems, cooling systems, energy generation and storage, et cetera.
The needs are huge, and that's why we need a collective approach. Today we want to work on this collective approach, this constructive and cooperative working process to have this pan-European solution, by covering technological innovation in the building industry, new materials, the circular economy, new technologies, digitalisation of processes that are going to increase the performance and productivity of the building industry in Europe, reducing costs for European companies and thus improving also our economies' competitiveness.
Secondly, the retrofitting of the housing stock. I mentioned already the massive needs of European companies and European countries, which are different depending on the specificities of the different geographies, the climate zones, and the history of the different countries, but are very large in all member states, as I have been told since I took the helm of the European Investment Bank by all finance ministers and prime ministers throughout the EU.
And thirdly, cooperation in the development of affordable and social housing together with national partners and other European and international partners. As I said, the objectives are multiple. As we launch this work, we are thinking about the competitiveness of Europe's economy. We are thinking about reducing energy bills and reducing the carbon footprint of the housing sector, which is of the essence to meet our Paris climate commitments in terms of reduction of CO2 emissions, and of course also to provide affordable housing to European families – with a particular focus on the younger generations.
I hope that today's meeting, the first of many, will already start bringing good examples, best practices that we could scale up to reach the necessary scale and size to respond to the European challenge.
The European Investment Bank Group has been heavily investing in the area of housing. In the last five years alone, we have provided support for affordable and sustainable housing in the amount of around 13.4 billion euros. Earlier this week, we signed a 490 million Euro loan to provide housing in Catalonia. Just yesterday, our Board approved new, affordable and sustainable housing investments in Sweden, Germany, and Romania. You will today hear more about the home energy upgrade loan scheme in Ireland, which is backed by the European Investment Bank. We want to explore all these examples and see that we do not each reinvent the wheel, but instead try to put together these efforts and these investments and learn from each other, so that we can really find European solutions and scale up.
This is a very important concept. I started with this. I want to end with this idea. In this area, scale is of the essence. The projects that we have been financing can cover tens of houses, hundreds of houses, but here we are talking about millions of houses in Europe that need to be retrofitted or renovated. The needs are enormous, but this is also a great opportunity to provide scale in an area that can also contribute to the Capital Markets Union. That is another priority. European leaders agree on the need to push and to drive the integration of European capital markets. The European Investment Bank Group is in itself a Capital Markets Union instrument. We issue bonds under a common European signature. We channel savings into productive investments in the European Union, and we are in a very good position - the EIB and our subsidiary for risk finance, the European Investment Fund - to contribute to building stronger, deeper, more liquid capital markets in Europe to fund the investment needs of the private sector going forward.
The momentum is here both for housing to be tackled as the top priority, and for deepening the Capital Markets Union. And that's why it was urgent, and it is so timely, that we gather in this first meeting. As I said, this meeting is the first of many. We will be reaching out in a bilateral format or in different geometries with you, with the public sector, with the private sector, to see how we can build on the existing momentum and meet the expectations of European citizens – also making sure that Europe remains the best place to live and to thrive, especially for younger generations.
Let me close here and wish you a very productive discussion. The meeting will be moderated by David Yormesor, member of the communications team of the European Investment Bank, and chaired by Ioannis Tsakiris, the Vice President with oversight on this top priority of housing.
I leave you to it. Thank you.