Yet so far, the EIB hasn’t demonstrated any significant leadership in transforming into a bank that values climate resilient development over ‘business as usual’.

Developing countries urgently need access to increased, predictable flows of climate finance to help tackle the global climate crisis. In order to become a Climate Bank, the EIB must prioritise sustainable investments and significantly increase financial grants to developing countries.

The EIB took the bold step in 2019 to stop lending finance to fossil fuel energy projects by the end of 2021. It's crucial that this Roadmap does not allow for anything to undermine the integrity of this commitment as doing so would impact the ability of the EU, EU Member States and developing countries to become truly climate resilient.

Unfortunately, the EIB's draft position paper risks doing just this, through support for non-climate-friendly infrastructure, not fully taking the EU’s external impact on global land-use emissions into account and by not doing enough to support energy efficiency renovations. There's still time for the EIB to reverse these positions and to focus on creating a system that prioritises financial flows for sustainable climate resilience.

Eurodad, as part of a coalition of Civil Society Organisations is calling for the EIB Climate Bank Roadmap to:

• Exclude high-carbon activities in the transport, energy and heavy industry sectors, starting with an immediate and explicit ban on any investments in capacity increase for motorways or airports
• Stop support to high-carbon companies, and to financial intermediaries, which lack time-bound, science-based targets and decarbonisation plans to align with the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement.

Read the letter in its entirety