Changes from plenary report to adopted text

43. Welcomes the EIB’s intention to expand financial and advisory support for affordable housing, especially for younger generations; encourages close synergy and exchange with the Commission, municipalities and local authorities, cooperative housing providers, housing associations and the construction sector, exchanging best practice and promoting pan-European cooperation; invites the EIB to support projects delivering affordable access to renewable energy, housing and public services, community-led initiatives and small projects with a particular focus on fighting energy poverty;

44. Welcomes the EIB Group’s inclusion of agriculture and bioeconomy among its key priorities; underlines that agriculture is a key driver of growth and development in rural areas and that enhancing support and fostering innovation for this vital sector play a significant role in ensuring food security; highlights the financial challenges faced by farmers, particularly young farmers, noting that farmers and enterprises in this sector experience lower success rates when applying for financing; calls on the EIB Group to increase its involvement in the agricultural sector by improving access to funding;

45. Calls on the EIB to intensify its efforts to promote youth employment, particularly by supporting projects and programmes that foster youth entrepreneurship, access to employment, vocational training and innovation, in order to contribute to fairer and more inclusive territorial development and to help curb brain drain, especially in the EU’s island regions and economically disadvantaged areas;

Promoting the digital transformation and new technologies

46. Calls on the EIB to strengthen financing for the EU’s open strategic autonomy in the digital field and to promote research, support the development of European digital infrastructure, foster new and disruptive technologies such as AI and quantum computing, and enable the growth of digital start-ups; underlines the importance of bridging digital divides, both within the EU and globally, to ensure inclusive access to digital infrastructure and services; highlights the importance of aligning EIB digital investments with EU strategic priorities such as the Digital Decade targets, including connectivity, digital skills and the digital transformation of businesses;

47. Supports the EIF’s expansion of the European Tech Champions Initiative (ETCI) to attract private capital to scale up innovative start-ups into successful global leaders, ensuring that European-founded companies and technologies remain in the EU through the late growth stage; highlights the need for the deployment of the current ETCI to be accelerated in order to keep up with the pace of innovation and start-ups; calls, furthermore, for the successful experience of the ETCI to be built on to develop other similar initiatives to continue supporting the digital transition and other strategic sectors, and encourages the EIF to explore setting up a second generation of this initiative as well as to explore the possibility of investing in funds of funds;

48. Underlines that institutional investors in Europe could play a bigger role in supporting venture capital, especially for scale-ups; urges the EIB Group therefore to create an European Tech Forum, bringing together the venture capital ecosystem, to engage institutional investors following the model of the Tibi initiative; calls on the EIB to offer opportunities for such investors to build their expertise and opt in to co-investment schemes between the EIF and institutional investors, on transparent and pre-agreed terms;

49. Highlights the fact that the Clean Industrial Deal aims to develop a TechEU programme with the EIB; stresses the importance of ensuring that this fund has a specific allocation target for start-ups and scale-ups;

50. Calls on the EIB to support the strengthening of cybersecurity capabilities in the EU, in order to make Europe more resilient while enhancing existing cooperation between the Member States and in order to protect critical entities and essential services;

51. Highlights the fact that the security of supply of critical raw materials (CRMs) is crucial for the green and digital transitions, the defence sector and the EU industrial base in general; recalls the role played by the EIB in the EU Raw Materials Alliance and the Union’s aim of becoming more autonomous as regards the CRM supply; emphasises the importance of a circular economy approach to CRMs, in order to reduce the EU’s dependence on non-EU countries and boost its strategic autonomy; calls, therefore, on the EIB to invest more in the CRM sector to enhance resilience in raw materials with a particular focus on the recycling of secondary raw materials;

52. Calls on the EIB to support the technological transformation of European companies, as well as the development of digital skills among employees and entrepreneurs;

EIB neighbourhood and Global Gateway

53. Welcomes the EIB’s vital support for Ukraine in the light of Russia’s full-scale, unjustified and illegal war of aggression; calls for an increase in EU budget guarantees to allow the EIB to continue to deliver and strengthen public and private sector operations in Ukraine, supporting Ukraine’s immediate economic challenges, but also envisaging the reconstruction of the country over the medium to long term;

54. Emphasises that, to decrease dependence on non-EU countries, the deployment of resilient European-controlled infrastructure, among others in the domains of satellite communications, energy and logistics, is essential;

55. Stresses the important role that the EIB plays in supporting Members States and countries outside the EU, particularly candidate countries, in obtaining access to risk capital markets, thus expanding investment opportunities;

56. Stresses that, as part of the EU’s external action toolbox, the Global Gateway is crucial for Europe’s global position and aims to promote the rules-based multilateral system, sustainable development, democracy, human rights, gender equality and the rule of law; welcomes the EIB’s role, as the EU’s leading development bank, in this regard; recalls the importance of predictable guarantees from the EU budget to enable the EIB to continue delivering operations outside the EU;

57. Calls for enhanced transparency and disclosure practices in line with other multinational development banks, along with the establishment of an independent complaints mechanism that can effectively address and remedy grievances; underlines the need for effective mechanisms to ensure the participation of, and accountability to, communities affected by EIB-financed projects to ensure that Global Gateway projects are responsive to local needs, are gender-sensitive and deliver meaningful developmental results; emphasises the importance of public participation, in particular in the EIB’s planning, appraisal and monitoring processes for CRMs, including the Free Prior Informed Consent (FPIC) of Indigenous communities, as provided for in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples;

58. Reiterates its call for EIB Global to focus blending operations on areas where they can add value to the local economy while avoiding the crowding out of private capital and to ensure that blended finance is not used for essential public services, particularly health, education and social protection; recalls that EU development policy goals, and in particular the goal of enhancing affordable access to healthcare, should guide EIB investments in the field, to ensure better health outcomes for all, and in particular for women;

59. Expects the EIB’s global activities to also respond swiftly to evolving realities and urgent needs; highlights the gap in development aid financing resulting from the US aid freeze and the reduction of funding towards the Global South; calls for concrete initiatives to prevent humanitarian or health crises, to support pan-African trade, infrastructure and regional integration, and strengthen ties with Europe; welcomes EIB Global’s intention to scale up higher-risk operations, enabled by the mandate of the Development and International Cooperation Instrument – Global Europe (NDICI-Global Europe);

60. Expresses concern over reports that some EU-funded projects outside the EU, including under the Global Gateway, are being built by Chinese companies, with Chinese firms at times winning more EIB-funded contracts than EU firms; urges the Commission to ensure a level playing field by working with the EIB to boost European company participation; recommends procurement practices that prioritise best price/quality ratio over lowest price to promote fair competition and align with EU values;

61. Welcomes the efforts of the EIB, together with nine other multilateral development banks, to strengthen their collaboration in advancing progress towards the SDGs; calls on the EIB to continue cooperating with other bilateral and multilateral institutions to develop and apply common methodologies for development impact analysis, with a view to ensuring long-term positive impacts and added value;

62. Welcomes the EIB’s announcement to step up support for sectors such as water supplies, small businesses, renewable energy and energy efficiency, as well as to further reinforce partnerships within Europe and globally, including with private actors, to deliver maximum impact on the ground;

Governance: accountability and transparency

63. Stresses that the EIB’s growing role should be accompanied by greater democratic accountability and transparency; including more timely publication of project-related documents; reiterates its call for an interinstitutional agreement between Parliament and the EIB to formalise and enhance their existing cooperation, including through regular structured dialogue, improved Parliament access to EIB documents and data, and the possibility for Parliament to submit questions for written answers to the EIB, as already provided for the European Central Bank; in this context, asks the EIB to provide Parliament with a clear, simplified overview of EU budget contributions to its balance sheet, off-balance sheet, and profit and loss account;

64. Highlights the importance of the EIB ensuring full transparency and traceability of projects funded, including more detailed information, to enable proper oversight by all relevant stakeholders, including civil society organisations, rather than solely by the ministries responsible; recalls that all recipients of EU funding have a general obligation to acknowledge its origin and ensure the visibility of any EU funding received; calls on the EIB Group to ensure that the final recipients comply with the visibility conditions of the EU’s financial support;

65. Invites the EIB to boost the participation of European companies in procurement processes launched for projects financed by the EIB; encourages the EIB to advise borrowers to prioritise eligibility of European companies in order to strengthen European competitiveness;

66. Underlines the importance of the EIB Group’s upholding the highest standards in preventing all forms of fraud, tax evasion, tax avoidance, money laundering and the financing of terrorism; notes that safeguarding the integrity of the EIB Group’s financing is essential to ensure public trust and the effective use of resources; takes note of the inquiries completed by the European Ombudsman and ongoing investigations by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office and the European Anti-Fraud Office, and expects full clarity and appropriate follow-up, including any necessary consequences;

67. Reiterates its call for the EIB to consider aligning the division of labour within the Management Committee with recommendations from EU institutions, to help mitigate potential conflicts of interest;

68. Welcomes the 2024 framework for the recognition of trade unions at the European Investment Bank;

69. Welcomes the EIB’s principles of diversity, equity and inclusion, including the target of at least 40 % of management positions being held by women by the end of 2026; calls for a geographically balanced representation of EU nationalities among staff;

70. Highlights the need to strengthen the EIB’s human rights policies, including the establishment of a clear and effective human rights due diligence framework and strategy; stresses that environmental and social impact assessments should be carried out by independent experts, and that independent verification mechanisms should be introduced to oversee the self-monitoring and self-reporting conducted by EIB clients;

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71. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission and the European Investment Bank.