BRUSSELS — When a senior European Investment Bank official labeled concerns about its record in least developed countries and fragile states as “fake news” at an event last week, it did not go unchallenged.
“We never said that EIB has not invested in poor countries,” Monique Barbut, former executive secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification and 1 of 9 experts behind last month’s long-awaited report on how to rationalize European development finance, told Devex. “[The problem] is their model of intervention, which does not seem to us like a reliable model in the long term for something that wants to be a development agency.”
The so-called “Wise Persons” report, commissioned by European Union member states to rationalize the bloc’s development finance architecture, outlined three long-term options for a new European Climate and Sustainable Development Bank.