What changed

MOTION FOR A EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT RESOLUTION

P10_TA(2026)0245

on the financialFinancial activities of the European Investment Bank Group – annual report 2025

(2025/2213(INI))

Committee on Budgets

PE784.507

European Parliament resolution of 7 July 2026 on the financial activities of the European Investment Bank Group – annual report 2025 (2025/2213(INI))

The European Parliament,

9. Encourages the EIB to continue developing innovative financial instruments to mobilise Europe’s substantial private savings for productive investment, especially by engaging with institutional investors to support venture capital, so as to contribute to advancing the Savings and Investments Union; emphasises that EIB-supported investments should include competitiveness impact assessments, ensuring that Union funds effectively leverage innovation, productivity and market scaling in key industrial sectors;

10. Recalls that the EIB was the first issuer of a green bond and is now the largest multi-currency issuer of green bonds; welcomes the fact that on 2 April 2025 the EIB issued its first Climate Awareness Bond, aligned with the EU Green Bond Standard Regulation1;Regulation; highlights the key role of the EIB in developing the green bonds market and providing financing solutions to sustainable companies;

Driving innovation for technological leadership

11. Is concerned that the EU risks losing capital, talent and innovation capacity to faster-moving global competitors, and that the EU continues to lag behind in the development of key enabling technologies; welcomes the launch of the TechEU programme, building on the successful European Tech Champions Initiative, mobilising up to EUR 250 billion in investment; calls for this programme to prioritise investments that are capable of competing globally and contributing to long-term sustainable growth and to strengthen European supply chains and reduce strategic dependencies; stresses the need to increase investment in European technologies and sectors critical to long-term resilience, including semiconductors, battery value chains, digital sovereignty and clean tech manufacturing; encourages the EIB to increase the share of funding projected for 2027; calls for a balanced and comprehensive allocation of resources under the TechEU programme to SMEs, start-ups and scale-ups to ensure that competitiveness is adequately supported alongside other core objectives; highlights the need for the deployment of such programmes to be accelerated in order to keep up with the pace of innovation and start-ups; calls for an increase in the European Investment Fund budget dedicated to the EU venture capital ecosystem;

12. Notes that almost 60 % of the EIB’s financing in 2025 was directed towards the transition to a low-carbon economy; calls on the EIB to reinforce competitiveness and economic security by enabling a predictable, inclusive, fair and affordable transition, without placing an undue burden on industry and households; underlines that climate and environmental investments can contribute to strengthening Europe’s industrial base, productivity and global competitiveness; supports investments across industrial value chains, including low-carbon technologies, to enable economically sustainable pathways to decarbonisation, where such investments are driven by innovation and have a clear potential to enhance market competitiveness and European strategic autonomy; calls on the EIB to apply technology-neutral evaluation criteria, such as life-cycle carbon intensity and grid stability, when financing low-carbon energy projects, including nuclear energy, while fully respecting the sovereign right of each Member State to determine its own energy mix;

13. Recalls that cleantech can contribute to strengthening EU sovereignty and competitiveness; welcomes the EIB’s alignment with the EU sustainable finance framework, including the integration of the EU Taxonomy criteria; calls for continued investments with a clear and measurable impact on emissions reduction; stresses the need for investments in climate adaptation and resilience; encourages investments in research and development, as well as in innovative technologies for climate preparedness; welcomes the agreement between the EIB and EEA to deepen their collaboration on biodiversity and climate actions; expects the EIB to leverage its technical assistance and advisory services, in particular to support projects delivering affordable access to renewable energy, with a focus on reducing energy prices and ensuring the security of energy supply, including for vulnerable households;

14. Notes that the EIB delivered EUR 16 billion in financing for small businesses and start-ups in 2025; underlines that improving access to finance, in particular to risk capital, private equity and scale-up funding, is crucial to support the growth and internationalisation of competitive European firms; calls for efforts to be stepped up to close the financing gap for high-growth companies and to foster a more dynamic and integrated European capital market; is of the opinion that efforts to mobilise additional resources for SMEs and scale-ups should be strengthened to ensure that they can compete globally; calls on the EIB to increase its financing for SMEs across the Union; encourages the EIF to launch more initiatives to support start-ups and scale-ups;

15. Calls on the EIB to further simplify and accelerate application and approval procedures, reduce administrative burdens, and strengthen support for small beneficiaries, including local and regional authorities, municipalities, SMEs and start-ups, by ensuring that prerequisites and reporting requirements are proportionate to the allocation value and/or the size of the beneficiary, without compromising financial standards, and to allocate funding on the basis of efficiency, economic viability and measurable impact; calls in particular, for improved access to financing for SMEs and start-ups, including through simplified eligibility criteria and procedures under InvestEU and the EIF, especially in less developed and rural regions, complemented by enhanced technical assistance; further calls for funding to be allocated on the basis of efficiency, economic viability and measurable impact, and for proportionate ex post evaluations to ensure the effective use of resources and the crowding-in of private investment; expresses concern that disproportionate environmental, social and governance reporting requirements imposed on beneficiaries deter economically viable projects and place European businesses at a competitive disadvantage, and calls on the EIB to review these requirements to ensure proportionality;

Financing energy security and the secure supply of critical raw materials for industrial competitiveness

17. Notes with satisfaction that in 2025, the EIB recorded EUR 33 billion in financing for Europe’s energy security, supporting EUR 108 billion in total investment, including EUR 11 billion for renewable energy sources in 2025; calls for climate and energy policies to be implemented in a pragmatic manner, ensuring the financing of cost-effective solutions, in line with the EU Taxonomy and guided by measurable economic impacts that guarantee affordable energy, strategic independence and system reliability and infrastructure development; recalls that a just transition is one of the pillars of the EIB climate roadmap, and welcomes EIB efforts towards ensuring that the shift towards a low-carbon economy is socially fair and sustainable, leaving no one behind;

18. Highlights that the security of supply of critical raw materials (CRM) 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 European 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 CRM, based on recycling and reuse, in order to reduce the EU’s dependence on third 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 achieving the goals of the CRM Act2,Act, namely the extraction, recycling and processing of secondary raw materials;

19. Calls for stronger EU-level coordination on critical raw materials, including closer cooperation between the EIB, export credit agencies and other public financial institutions; notes that the EU is lagging behind competitors such as Canada, the United States and Australia, which apply more coordinated ‘whole-of-government’ financing approaches; stresses that all supported CRM-related projects must meet high environmental and social standards; calls on the EIB to improve transparency in the selection and financing projects that cover all the stages of CRM as defined by the CRM Act;

25. Reiterates its call for EIB Global to limit blending operations to 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 universal and affordable access to healthcare, should guide EIB investments in this field, to ensure better health outcomes for all;

26. Calls on the Member States to amend the EIB’s exclusion list in order to enable the financing of weapons and ammunition beyond mere dual-use technologies, thereby contributing to the development of the European defence industry;

27. Stresses that the EIB’s lending in non-EU countries should reinforce the EU’s external priorities; calls on the EIB to include effective cooperation by partner countries on migration management, including the readmission and return of migrants who have no legal right to stay in the EU, as a relevant criterion within its external lending framework for non-EU countries;

Support for cohesion, agriculture and housing

26.28. Notes that in 2025, approximately half of the EIB’s financing supported investment in the EU’s less developed regions and EUR 3 billion were allocated to agriculture and the bioeconomy; encourages the EIB to deepen cooperation with national promotional banks and regional financial institutions in order to maximise the territorial impact of Union funding and reduce regional investment disparities; calls for the use of blended finance by combining EU cohesion funds with EIB instruments; emphasises that ensuring access to direct financing in all regions is essential to foster economic convergence and promote economic and territorial cohesion and that, together with reinforcing food security, this is crucial for the EU’s strategic autonomy; calls for the EIB to mobilise predictable and sufficient funding for young farmers;

27.29. Calls for preserving the EIB Group’s support to agriculture and cohesion policy, including the wider use of financial instruments to leverage EU grants and attract private investment; highlights the value added of adequate financing for joint EIB-Commission technical assistance to implementing authorities to help ensure the timely implementation and additionality of investments, in particular through building administrative capacity and developing investment pipelines; calls for expanded use of blended finance to target underserved and cohesion regions by combining EU structural and investment funds with other instruments;

28.30. Welcomes the efforts of the EIB Group in financing social housing projects across the Union; calls on the Bank to step up its activities in improving access to affordable housing in light of the growing housing crisis in Europe; encourages the EIB to collaborate with other European public investment banks, local public financial institutions, local governments, cooperative and social housing companies, and municipalities to finance housing solutions and provide long-term solutions to the cost of living crisis;

29.31. Welcomes the EIB’s efforts in supporting projects that deliver on the implementation of the European Pillar of Social Rights and the UN Sustainable Development Goals; invites the EIB to increase the weighting of social benefits in project appraisals in order to provide affordable long-term solutions;

Transparency and accountability

30.32. Recalls that EIB funds are public money and should always be subject to public scrutiny and accountability, especially where backed by EU guarantees or EU budgetary funds; reiterates its call for a structured interinstitutional framework ensuring enhanced parliamentary oversight, improved access to information and the possibility for Parliament to provide input on the EIB’s strategic orientations; notes progress in the 2025 Foreign Direct Investment Transparency Index but calls for further improvements; stresses the need for fiscal responsibility and the efficient use of funds to protect taxpayers’ money; notes that strengthened reporting mechanisms are essential for effective parliamentary scrutiny;

31.33. Highlights the importance of the EIB’s ensuring the traceability of projects funded; stresses that the EIB should publish, in a timely manner, more detailed information regarding its projects, including their rationale and context, an explanation of how they align with the EU’s common priorities and information on the actual receiving economic operators, clearly highlighting which projects are supported by the EU budget; welcomes the EIB’s decision, following an Ombudsman inquiry, to start proactively publishing its environmental and social assessments of projects located outside the EU that are likely to have a significant impact in those areas;

32.34. Stresses that carefully designed temporary guarantees should be used, where appropriate, rather than grants, limiting direct budgetary impact and favouring the crowding-in of private capital; recalls that guarantees represent a real fiscal risk and should be subject to the same discipline as direct expenditure; underlines the fact that the use of guarantees must be accompanied by a high degree of transparency, democratic oversight and proper risk assessment mechanisms; stresses that private investors should retain the primary exposure to commercial risk, while the EIB’s intervention should remain limited, clearly defined and temporary, focusing on risks not bearable by private market participants and on ensuring project-specific risk mitigation; calls for the EIB to limit blending operations to areas where they can add value to the local economy while avoiding the crowding-out of private capital;

33.35. Stresses the overall high operational costs of the EIB; calls, therefore, for the identification of appropriate mitigation measures, with a view to enhancing cost-efficiency while safeguarding the Bank’s operational effectiveness;

34.36. Notes that the EIB Group operates under a dual regime under which EU budget-backed operations are indirectly scrutinised by the Commission and the ECA, and by Parliament in its decision on the discharge of the EU budget, while operations financed from the EIB’s own resources stemming from the Member States – more than three quarters of EIB operations – fall largely outside systematic external audit and scrutiny by national parliaments and the European Parliament; notes that the EIB has a dense internal accountability architecture and that an external auditor provides oversight of the EIB’s operations and accounting system; agrees that this structure is broadly in line with international practices; notes that reporting to the European Parliament is occasional, that cooperation with the European Ombudsman has shifted and that the ECA’s role is limited by the current rules and implementing arrangements; highlights the need for tangible actions by the EIB to address this situation, in line with the previous calls included in Parliament’s resolutions and the availability for dialogue and cooperation expressed by the European budgetary and discharge authority; calls on the EIB to actively involve national supreme audit institutions in this process to ensure accountability for operations not currently covered by the ECA and to guarantee robust accountability and oversight;

35. Is concerned by the ongoing corruption probe against a former EIB President; expects the European Public Prosecutor’s Office and the European Anti-Fraud Office to thoroughly investigate the case and awaits full clarity on the matter; recalls that any wrongdoing and misuse of public funds should be severely punished;

37. Takes note of the internal oversight role of the EIB Audit Committee; points out that no external prudential oversight in accordance with internationally accepted supervisory standards is carried out, except in the area of liquidity management; encourages the EIB’s Board of Governors, given the size, complexity and specificities of the EIB business model, to establish appropriate arrangements to comply with the highest standards of external prudential oversight, while considering the necessary adaptations derived from the EIB’s unique business model;

36. Calls for the the EIB’s human rights policies to be strengthened; 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;

38. Is concerned by the ongoing corruption probe against a former EIB President; expects the European Public Prosecutor’s Office and the European Anti-Fraud Office to thoroughly investigate the case and awaits full clarity on the matter; recalls that any wrongdoing and misuse of public funds should be severely punished;

37. Acknowledges the EIB’s efforts to improve management practices, following the EIB internal survey of 2023; calls for the continued implementation of the EIB’s principles with regard to diversity, equity and inclusion, including the target of ensuring that at least 40 % of management positions are held by women by the end of 2026;

39. Calls for the the EIB’s human rights policies to be strengthened; 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;

38. Reiterates its call for the EIB to urgently review the division of labour within the Management Committee, and in particular to ensure that EIB Vice-Presidents never take the lead on projects emanating from their home countries, even if the Management Committee takes collective responsibility for its decisions, in view of the clear risk of conflicts of interest; emphasises that there are numerous recommendations on this matter from EU institutions;

40. Acknowledges the EIB’s efforts to improve management practices, following the EIB internal survey of 2023; calls for the continued implementation of the EIB’s principles with regard to diversity, equity and inclusion, including the target of ensuring that at least 40 % of management positions are held by women by the end of 2026;

39. Welcomes the fact that in 2025, following repeated calls by Parliament, the EIB made itself available to enter into negotiations with a view to establishing an ‘agreement’ on enhanced cooperation between Parliament and the EIB; further welcomes the shared understanding that negotiations should be concluded in a timely manner; underlines that such an ‘agreement’ will formalise and strengthen interactions between Parliament and the EIB, thereby reflecting a mutual commitment to closer cooperation; notes that the added value of such agreements is attested to by the implementation of comparable agreements concluded between Parliament and other Union institutions and bodies or intergovernmental organisations;

41. Reiterates its call for the EIB to urgently review the division of labour within the Management Committee, and in particular to ensure that EIB Vice-Presidents never take the lead on projects emanating from their home countries, even if the Management Committee takes collective responsibility for its decisions, in view of the clear risk of conflicts of interest; emphasises that there are numerous recommendations on this matter from EU institutions;

42. Welcomes the fact that in 2025, following repeated calls by Parliament, the EIB made itself available to enter into negotiations with a view to establishing an ‘agreement’ on enhanced cooperation between Parliament and the EIB; further welcomes the shared understanding that negotiations should be concluded in a timely manner; underlines that such an ‘agreement’ will formalise and strengthen interactions between Parliament and the EIB, thereby reflecting a mutual commitment to closer cooperation; notes that the added value of such agreements is attested to by the implementation of comparable agreements concluded between Parliament and other Union institutions and bodies or intergovernmental organisations;

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40.43. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council and the Commission.

EXPLANATORY STATEMENT

The report welcomes the EIB’s strategic priorities for 2024-2027, which are closely aligned with the EU’s key political objectives, demonstrating the bank’s readiness to adapt to evolving policies while remaining committed to long-term goals.

Against the backdrop of multiple internal challenges, the need for future investments, and rising geopolitical tensions, there is a strong call for the EIB to play a greater role in addressing Europe’s investment needs and funding common EU priorities, especially in the defence policy area. The EIB Group is a key player in mobilising private and public investment across Europe and maximising the Bank’s potential to leverage investment is essential.

This year’s annual report focuses on the following key topics: closing the investment gap and strengthening Europe’s competitiveness and innovation capacity; promoting the digital transformation; addressing challenges in energy infrastructure, cohesion and agriculture; and the EIB’s role in the neighbourhood and Global Gateway. Moreover, it recalls the need for public scrutiny and accountability, while maintaining its role of leveraging private resources and enabling crowd-in of investments.

ANNEX: DECLARATION OF INPUT

The rapporteur declares under his exclusive responsibility that he did not include in his report input from interest representatives falling within the scope of the Interinstitutional Agreement on a mandatory transparency register1, or from representatives of public authorities of third countries, including their diplomatic missions and embassies, to be listed in this Annex pursuant to Article 8 of Annex I to the Rules of Procedure.

INFORMATION ON ADOPTION IN COMMITTEE RESPONSIBLE

Date adopted

3.6.2026

Result of final vote

+ : 22

- : 5

0 : 0

FINAL VOTE BY ROLL CALL BY THE COMMITTEE RESPONSIBLE

22

+

ECR

Bogdan Rzonca

PPE

Isabel Benjumea Benjumea, Esther Herranz García, Monika Hohlmeier, Danuse Nerudová, Jacek Protas, Jüri Ratas, Karlo Ressler

PfE

Jana Nagyová, Jaroslava Pokorná Jermanová

Renew

Stine Bosse, Olivier Chastel, Lucia Yar

S&D

Mohammed Chahim, Matthias Ecke, Nikolas Farantouris, Jean-Marc Germain, Sandra Gómez López, Giuseppe Lupo, Nils Usakovs

Verts/ALE

Rasmus Nordqvist, Nicolae Stefanuta

5

-

ESN

Markus Buchheit

NI

Thomas Geisel

PfE

Tomasz Buczek, Angéline Furet, Julien Sanchez

0

0

Key:

+ : in favour

- : against

0 : abstentions