European Investment Bank (EIB) is the European Union (EU)’s bank, created by the Treaty of Rome in 1958 and wholly owned by the 27 EU member states. EIB is the largest multilateral financial institution in the world and one of the largest providers of climate finance.

The bank is the lending arm of the EU: its task is to provide finance and expertise for sound and sustainable investment projects furthering EU policy objectives. In particular, EIB supports projects that make a significant contribution to growth and employment. Its focus in on the following priority areas: climate and environment, innovation and skills, infrastructure, access to finance for smaller businesses, cohesion, and development.

While most of its operations are in Europe, EIB is active in 140 countries. It finances its operations by raising substantial volume in the international capital markets and passing its funding advantage onto clients on the lending side.

EIB’s sustainability-funding team pursues the issuance of Climate Awareness Bonds (CABs) and Sustainability Awareness Bonds (SABs). The first CAB was issued in 2007 and inaugurated the green bond market. CABs are allocated to financing activities contributing substantially to climate change mitigation. The first SAB was issued in 2018. SABs complement CABs with allocations to further areas of environmental and social sustainability.

EIB’s Climate Bank Roadmap outlines the bank’s strategic plan for 2021-2025 and commits EIB to the following areas:
• Increasing the share of green finance to exceed 50% of new annual loans by 2025.
• Aligning its tracking methodology for green finance with the EU Taxonomy Regulation.
• Reflecting such alignment to capital markets via extension of CAB and SAB eligibilities.
• Gradually aligning CABs and SABs with the proposed EU Green Bond Standard.

EIB is the first issuer to have tuned the documentation of its CABs and SABs to the evolving EU legislation on sustainable finance, including the EU Taxonomy Regulation, which has been in force since July 2020. This approach establishes a direct link between EU sustainability policy objectives and EIB’s sustainability lending and funding activities. This will permit the bank gradually to extend CAB and SAB loan eligibilities as the EU Sustainability Taxonomy (EST) is rolled out on the lending side.

Regarding CABs, a first extension of eligibilities based on the EST proposals and approach took place in June 2020 – to low-carbon transport and innovative low-carbon technologies. SAB eligibilities were extended in April 2020 to other financing areas directly related to the fight against COVID-19 and, in 2021, to sustainable forest management – contributing to “protection and restoration of biodiversity and ecosystems” (EU Taxonomy Regulation objective number 6).

SUSTAINABILITY OBJECTIVES OF GSS BOND PROGRAMMES
CAB: Climate-change mitigation
SAB: Environmental objectives beyond climate-change mitigation, social objectives

PUBLIC ISSUER ESG RATINGS/SCORES

Nathalie de Weert
Head of Funding for Public Markets
+352 4379 86210
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Aldo Romani
Head of Sustainability Funding
+352 4379 86230
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
www.eib.org/investor_relations