Author: GovWorldMag - Government World Magazine

Werner Hoyer, President of the European Investment Bank (EIB), meets with UN Secretary General António Guterres in New York to discuss cooperation and the importance of multilateral action.
EIB pledges support for reaching Sustainable Development Goals under the new UN strategy with proposals to strengthen impact

Werner Hoyer who heads the world‘s largest multilateral lender, is in New York this week for key discussions at the United Nations aimed at supporting international development efforts. Apart from senior representatives of UN agencies, the head of the EU Bank is meeting UN Secretary General António Guterres today to reaffirm the importance of multilateralism and give the EU Bank’s explicit support for the new UN strategy which underlines the importance of partnership with International Financial Institutions like the EIB.

Ahead of the meeting with UNSG Guterres, EIB President Werner Hoyer said: “The EIB Group and the United Nations are guided by the same goal: to improve people’s lives and eradicate poverty by building resilience and stability. Our two institutions and fellow multilateral actors have a major role and responsibility in this task. At a time when multilateralism is being questioned in some quarters, I am in New York to reaffirm the EU Bank‘s support for the UN‘s new strategy and the reforms proposed by Secretary General Guterres.”

Dr Hoyer added, “We all need to inject new rigour and efficiency into the job of development. There isn’t enough public money in the world to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals without strong support from private capital. Global partnerships are key to success. We are looking closely at our own instruments to bring about a new paradigm for development, building on the EU Bank’s strong track record in leveraging private investments. We want to work closely with the UN, other EU institutions, national governments, and partners everywhere to enhance the impact of our financing. We will also discuss new kinds of bonds linked to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals in the same way as Green Bonds, first launched by the EIB in 2007, have become a crucial asset in catalysing investment for climate action and the environment. We are keen to explore how we can offer more support to the UN and further our existing partnerships with its agencies.“

“We greatly appreciate the role of the European Union and its financing arm, the EIB. With our two institutions working together, there are great gains to be made in mobilizing private sector support for sustainable and inclusive development”, said UN Secretary General António Guterres.

Discussions between Dr Hoyer and UN representatives this week are also expected to focus on proposals from the European Investment Bank to improve its own delivery of European and international development goals – the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in particular. The EIB president is laying out how these efforts can be supported through a dedicated EIB Group subsidiary pulling together the EU Bank’s financing for development and possible new SDG-focused EIB bonds. These initiatives will be discussed and developed in the course of 2018.

Examples of EIB initiatives in development:

One example of how the EIB and the UN agencies have been able to complement each other is the Early Recovery Programme in Ukraine, which is already helping thousands of displaced persons and the communities hosting them. In this case, as in many others, multilateralism was paramount for the success of the initiative. Under the initiative the EIB provided loan financing of EUR 200 million while UNDP supported the final beneficiaries, provided for project monitoring and anti-corruption services through a grant. The programme finances approximately 1,000 social infrastructure projects that are of benefit to Internally Displaced Peoples or the communities that are hosting them. The valuable local presence of UNDP and their offices enabled the EIB to develop good relations with local authorities and security services immediately.

The ACP migration package
The ACP migration package aims to tackle the root causes of migration, through a development and financing model targeted particularly at Sub Saharan Africa. The ACP migration package takes in the entire range of projects, from public sector infrastructure (the platforms upon which the private sector is built) through expanding our resources for impact investment by turning the ACP Impact Financing Envelope into a EUR 800m revolving fund. This opens up the EIB for more projects like Senegal River Valley Rice, Africa Mobile Networks, Boost Africa and Novastar. This way, the EIB can reach more people at the base of the pyramid than ever before, but also reach more socially-directed funds, entrepreneurs, start-ups and essential service providers. The ACP migration package is about creating opportunity, in this regard. http://www.eib.org/projects/regions/acp/applying-for-loan/investment-facility/index.htm

Economic Resilience Initiative
The Economic Resilience Initiative was requested by European Union leaders in 2016 . Focused on the Western Balkans and Europe’s Southern Neighbourhood, which covers North Africa and the Middle East, the initiative is substantially increasing EIB financing in these regions: an extra EUR 6 billion in addition to the EUR 7.5 billion already planned.

It will combine support for the private sector, particularly for young people and women, with more investment in socially important sectors like water, health and education. The Bank estimates this additional financing would trigger around EUR 15 billion in additional investments from 2016 to 2020, taking the total EIB mobilisation of investment in the regions to some EUR 35 billion to 2020. http://www.eib.org/projects/initiatives/resilience-initiative/index

UNDP /EIB Group Memorandums of Understanding

September 2016: http://www.eib.org/infocentre/press/releases/all/2016/2016-228-new-undp-eib-accord-signed-to-boost-cooperation-to-reach-global-goals.htm

September 2017:
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the European Investment Fund (EIF), part of the EIB Group, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) boosting cooperation between the two institutions last year. The MoU emphasises the role small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) will play in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Through UNDP’s SDG Impact Finance initiative (UNSIF) and other efforts UNDP and the EIF will cooperate to support the SDGs and address global challenges such as international migration and refugees, by leveraging the private and philanthropic sectors, and utilising a broad range of financial instruments. http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/news-centre/news/2017/09/20/european-investment-fund-undp-accord-to-boost-cooperation-to-achieve-global-goals.html

One critic remarked that he could not support the Conservatives because they had never held up change or progress for a single day. He revealed a misunderstanding of Conservatism. Conservatives accept the past, and are happy to adapt and conserve all that is best from it. That does not mean we wish to go back in time, freeze the status quo or resist positive improvements to people’s lives. We like the new as well.

Radical parties of the left favour more revolutionary action, Conservatives favour more evolutionary action. Both often seek the same high level aims. The main parties in the UK if challenged would say they wish to promote greater prosperity and freedom for everyone in our society. The disagreements come over how you do that, and over how far you should go in sweeping aside or remodelling the past. There are also some issues of definition over freedom, with Conservatives thinking more of freeing people to do things for themselves, and socialists thinking of ways the state can enable some people to do things within government control. This distinction is a matter of emphasis or degree, not an absolute.

Curiously today the parties of the left are more conservative than the Conservatives when it comes to the big issue of constitutional reform and our withdrawal from the EU. They are more radical when it comes to wanting a much bigger role for the state in our lives, in the hope that will create greater equality of outcomes. They fight every inch of the way to try to avoid decisions passing from the EU to the UK people and Parliament. They seek new ways to mimic the controls, spending, taxes and requirements that come from the EU. At the same time they recommend spending far more on state service provision, without discussing whether they could do this within the tight guidelines of the Maastricht budget criteria that the EU requires of its members.

Conservatives and socialists both want good quality public services, with healthcare and education delivered free at the point of use. Both want to spend more on developing those services, with disagreements about how much of this extra spending can and should come from the proceeds of economic growth and how much if any should come from tax rises.

Meanwhile the mood of the country is for the EU to get on with Brexit and tell us what if any barriers they wish to impose on their trade with us. The government should seek to up the tempo and remind them nothing is agreed until all is agreed, and no deal is better than a bad deal.

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