The European Investment Bank and its role in financing public water

ABSTRACT

The European Investment Bank (EIB) emerged as the world’s largest multilateral public development bank from the 1990s. We explore the logic of EIB lending to the water sector in general, and to public water in particular. Water lending from the EIB’s establishment until 1990 reflected its core mandates, then, from 1991 to 2021, slippage occurred, as a process of levelling up meant the EIB distributed water lending more evenly among member countries. We find EIB water lending went to both public and private water, illustrating this using the case of the UK, the leading recipient of lending throughout the period.

KEYWORDS:

• European Investment Bank (EIB)
• European Union
• public water
• private water
• water lending

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We use the term ‘European Union’ throughout for convenience, rather than also using the terms ‘European Economic Community’ and ‘European Community’.

2. The UK is made up of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

3. Anonymized interview 1 with EIB Staff, conducted in Luxembourg in September 2021. Other contributions to this special issue likewise highlight how public banks can seek to minimize risks in general in order to borrow more cheaply (e.g., the Dutch Water Bank).

4. Anonymized interviews 2 and 3 with EIB Staff, Luxembourg, September 2021.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Part of this research was supported by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union (Jean Monnet Action 620296-EPP-1-2020-1-ES-EPPJMO-MODULE). The publication reflects only the authors’ views. The European Commission is not responsible for any use that ma [620296-EPP-1-2020-1-ES-EPPJMO-MODULE].