New EIB Group report highlights the impact and importance of cohesion support

The European Union’s cohesion policy, the policy of investing in European regions to raise living standards, has always been the most visible expression of European solidarity and interdependence. Since its foundation in 1958, the European Investment Bank (EIB) has also been a major actor in promoting cohesion in the European Union.

Over the course of the European Union’s last long-term budget, the EIB Group supported investments worth around €630 billion between 2014 and 2020 in cohesion regions, a sizeable investment volume equivalent to about 16 % of these regions’ gross domestic product (GDP). 

A study published this July found that lending in support of EU cohesion policy by the European Investment Bank Group (EIB Group) helped contain the economic fallout from the pandemic and could now help counter some of the short-term fallout from the war in Ukraine. The long-term benefits of these investments can go even further: by 2040, the investments supported between 2014 and 2020 are expected to raise EU gross domestic product (GDP) by an estimated 4.7 % above the baseline scenario, and lead to the creation of an additional 3.2 million jobs.

The EIB Group supports the EU’s cohesion policy by providing loans and advisory services to both private and public sector entities and by setting up and managing debt, equity or guarantee funds on behalf of national and regional public authorities.

Last October, the EIB adopted a bigger, bolder and more focused approach to cohesion by increasing its support for Europe’s lagging regions while at the same time ensuring that fully half of all its lending goes towards climate action and environmental sustainability.