EIB – sovereign – 2023
- Score:
- 37.0
- Position:
- 7 / 9 (Sovereign)
Overview
The European Investment Bank (EIB) is the European Union’s (EU) bank and is owned by its member states. EIB works with other EU institutions to support EU policy and provides lending, blended finance, and technical advice for investment both within and outside the EU. EIB was established in 1958.
Analysis
EIB came third-last in the sovereign DFI assessment with 37 out of 100. EIB’s overall performance was negatively affected due to the fact that it did not disclose data for significant indicators including activity indicators/metrics, results, and loan agreement/contract. Although EIB is an IATI publisher we could not find many of the projects from the sample on the Registry, therefore it lost points for the IATI format of publication.
EIB’s sovereign portfolio came sixth in the Core Information component, with 12.75 out of 30. It scored for twelve of the seventeen indicators. However, EIB dropped points on format for most of these indicators because almost half of the projects could not be found on IATI and some data points were not in its bulk download file. EIB was one of three sovereign DFIs not to score for each of the sovereign/non-sovereign, investment instrument, and E&S risk category indicators. It also did not score for funding source and loan agreement/contract.
EIB came third-last in the Impact Management component with a score of 8 out of 30. EIB scored points for two out of the three organisation-level indicators, impact measurement approach and evaluations. It did not score for any project-level indicators.
Although EIB also came third-last in the ESG and Accountability to Communities component, it did much better with 14.58 out of 30. It scored for all organisation-level indicators apart from independent accountability mechanism (IAM) community disclosure policy. It scored 100% for the E&S community disclosure policy, IAM global disclosure documentation, and project-level grievance mechanism (PGM) community disclosure policy indicators. At the project level it scored for the summary of E&S risks, E&S project plans/assessments, assurance of E&S community disclosure, and IAM global disclosure indicators.
EIB came sixth out of the nine sovereign DFIs in the Financial Information component, with 1.67 out of 15. It scored for the financial reports/statements and co-financing indicators but did not score for the other two indicators.
Recommendations
- EIB should ensure that all investments are published to the IATI Standard in a timely manner.
- It should clearly label whether individual investments are sovereign or non-sovereign.
- EIB should add more data points to its bulk download file that are already disclosed on its webpage, including status, project objectives, sub-sector, total investment cost, name of client, and date of activity disclosure.
- EIB should disclose further Core Information indicators including disbursement, client contact, E&S risk category, approval date, last update date, and contract. It should also consistently disclose investment instrument and funding source.
- EIB should make adjustments to its access to information policy so that exceptions apply only where these protect against harm to identified legitimate interests.
- It should disclose project-level Impact Management indicators, including activity indicators/metrics and results data for its projects.
- EIB should disclose sector/country strategies and its approach to determining impact attribution.
- EIB should publish E&S documents for all investments, including the minimum documentation for higher risk projects.
- It should develop a policy guiding the disclosure of the presence of the IAM at community level.
- EIB should provide assurance of community disclosure for investments when disclosure is required.
- For Financial Information it should disclose currency of investment and instrument-specific disclosure (share of equity, interest rate, loan tenor, and length of guarantee) and it should consistently disclose co-financing details.