The European Investment Bank Group’s contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals

EIB-backed projects bring the greatest financial contribution to goals involving the sectors in which the Bank has traditionally been the most active, such as SDG 9 (industry, innovation and infrastructure), SDG 11 (sustainable cities and communities) and SDG 7 (affordable and clean energy). Nonetheless, EIB projects also contribute significantly to those SDGs that feature a complex interaction of less tangible factors, both natural and human-induced. In its role as the EU climate bank, the EIB’s contribution to SDG 13 (climate action) is especially noteworthy.

For more details about how the EIB contributes towards the SDGs read the full report here.

The following chart displays how the EIF’s activities contributed to the SDGs in 2022. The biggest contributions were to SDGs 8 and 9, due to the EIF’s focus on i) supporting job creation, entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation, and encouraging the formalisation and growth of micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises, including through access to financial services, and ii) helping small-scale industrial and other enterprises to access financial services (including affordable credit), and promoting their integration into value chains and markets.

Over the next three years, competitiveness and growth will continue to be the EIF’s core business. However, the Fund is set to contribute to a broader range of SDGs as it adopts a more thematic focus. Support for innovation is expected to increase under the public policy goal of sustainability and green transformation as a result of increased investment in infrastructure funds and the new InvestEU thematic windows. The EIF is also expected to increase its support for sectors such as education, inclusive finance, sustainable agriculture and the circular economy.

For more details about how the EIF contributes towards the SDGs read the full report here.

EIB

In financial and project output and outcome terms, the EIB’s methodology for SDG reporting is comparable to those adopted by many other multilateral development banks. All EIB-supported projects are designed to have positive socioeconomic impact as well as sound financial returns. The impact of the Bank’s work is measured by gathering a detailed set of output and outcome data for all its projects. This ensures that the tangible benefits of the Bank’s activities are calculated not only in the context of each project, but also at the sectoral, national and international level. The EIB’s mapping methodology defines the relationship between its project level indicators and the SDGs. All indicators are mapped to the appropriate SDGs independently of project context, and each indicator may be mapped to up to two different SDGs. Each project thus contributes to all of the SDGs to which its data has been mapped. This approach takes into account the full range of interactions and interlinkages among the SDGs and minimises the number of arbitrary decisions required in the mapping process.

For more detail on the methodology read the full report here.

EIF

The contribution of each operation to the SDGs is determined by how the operation will relate to the EIF’s policy framework, which is built around four public policy goals and 16 underlying policy objectives (see Figure 1), each mapped to one or more SDG target. The contribution of EIF operations to the SDGs is calculated by mapping the operations to their policy objectives.

For more detail on the methodology read the full report here.