The Luxembourg-based European Investment Bank (EIB) Group has reported that it signed new financing contracts worth almost €88 billion to support over 900 projects across Europe in 2023.
These "high-impact" projects fell within the European Union's strategic priorities, including climate action, sustainable infrastructure and healthcare. EIB President Nadia Calviño announced the news in Brussels, Belgium on Tuesday 23 January 2024.
"Across Europe, the EIB Group is delivering EU priorities: boosting European competitiveness and the EU's leadership in green technologies, and helping to ensure a more secure future for people across the [European] Union and around the world," said President Calviño.
"The Group kept its promises. It met and exceeded its targets on a range of key EU priorities. [This] will translate into tangible benefits for us all, from safer drinking water to improved public transport, from better access to vaccines to more 5G mobile coverage, from job creation and increasing competitiveness to energy security and efficiency," she added.
Since 2021, the EIB Group has mobilised €349 billion in green investments and is on track to achieve the goal of €1 trillion in green financing supported by the end of the decade. It provided €49 billion in direct funding for climate action and environmental sustainability in 2023 - up from €38 billion in 2022.
Moreover, in 2023, the bank's investments included more than €21 billion as part of REPowerEU, an initiative designed to reduce Europe's dependence on fossil fuels and to accelerate the green transition. The electricity generation capacity financed is expected to be able to power 13.8 million households.
In a year characterised by growing instability around the world, EIB Global, the group's dedicated arm for investments outside the EU, provided more than €8.4 billion for projects. Almost half of this amount went to the world's least developed countries and fragile states. Overall, EIB Global financing mobilised €27 billion of investments under the EU Global Gateway initiative, ahead of schedule to reach €100 billion by 2027.
In addition to almost €2 billion in assistance to Ukraine since Russia's full-scale invasion, the bank established the EU4U Fund (supported by Member States and the European Commission) in 2023, to further stimulate economic resilience and reconstruction in Ukraine.
The EIB Group also invested €19.8 billion in innovation and €20 billion to support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and mid-caps. The European Investment Fund (EIF), an EIB Group entity specialised in providing risk finance, made a notable contribution, having signed almost €15 billion in investments last year. This includes €1 billion under the European Tech Champions initiative to scale up startups in disruptive technologies and improve Europe's competitiveness.
Also in the field of innovation, the EIB Group provided financing for nineteen projects linked to artificial intelligence (AI).
The group's financing in 2023 is expected to support about €320 billion in investment, reach 400,000 companies and support 5.4 million jobs. More than 45% of the group's financing within the EU went to cohesion regions, with close to 20% going to less developed regions, where the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita is less than 75% of the EU average.
