The European Union has not ceased exploring the prospect of a new European Climate and Sustainable Development Bank, but at the end of all its exploring it now looks likely to arrive close to where it started. They call it “Status Quo+.”
A new study, circulated to member states Tuesday and seen by Devex, revisits the decades-old question of what to do about the sometimes overlapping work of the European Investment Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
Unsure what to do with a 2019 Wise Persons Group report on the same topic, EU member states commissioned a feasibility study of three options, two of which the “wise people” had just analyzed themselves: Expanding the role of EBRD or creating a development-focused subsidiary of EIB. The consultants were also asked to consider the third, less radical, option of improving the current division of labor between the EU institutions, EBRD, EIB, and EU governments.