Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-03-07-Speech-1-085"
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"en.20050307.11.1-085"2
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"Mr President, may I first of all thank you for continuing the tradition that began in the previous legislative period. As Mr Lipietz mentioned just now, it is only five years since the European Investment Bank was invited to engage in dialogue with the European Parliament. For my part, I am delighted about it.
Mr President, please forgive me for having gone over my allotted time; I would simply like to conclude by restating our desire to continue this dialogue with Parliament. We are in dialogue with the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs and we have just begun to engage in dialogue with the Committee on Development. We are at the disposal of Parliament’s different committees to examine these issues in greater depth.
It is true that the European Investment Bank is not formally an institution of the European Union. Its shareholders are the Member States and we are answerable to our shareholders, that is to say the national governments and parliaments; on the other hand, however, the European Investment Bank was created by the Treaty and, as we have mentioned, its task is to support the European Union’s political objectives financially. I think it is therefore only right that the bank should be asked to give account of itself before the elected representatives of Europe’s citizens and I can confirm, as Mr Lipietz said at the beginning, that this is a productive dialogue.
Indisputably, Parliament is now able to take a more positive view of the EIB in a number of areas, because several recommendations made by the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs and adopted by this House have been implemented and progress has been made as a result, especially in the matters of governance, transparency and the quality of supervision. Last week I took part in the annual meeting of presidents of multilateral development banks and I was pleased to find that in several respects the EIB now serves as a model for other international financial institutions.
This is a productive dialogue. I think it should be continued with different committees. I will not enlarge any further on the questions of governance and transparency that I have just mentioned. I will simply say to Mrs Wortmann-Kool that we remain open on the question of prudential supervision. There is a very simple reason why no other international financial body is subject to this kind of supervision: the main purpose of prudential supervision is to protect depositors. International financial institutions have no depositors, however.
Nevertheless, we remain open. Parliament suggested that the European Central Bank might supervise the EIB. The Member States did not want to give the ECB such powers. In any case, I can tell you that we have decided to apply the new Basel II rules on a voluntary basis. If one day we do come under supervision, we will therefore be in a position to show the competent authority that we have applied the relevant rules.
A word about our activities in the European Union. I have noted the particular stress several Members of this House placed on our contribution to the Lisbon strategy. In Lisbon, the European Council in fact asked the EIB to make a contribution to funding in a number of areas that were considered absolute priorities for that strategy. You know how essential a part increasing investment in research and education clearly plays in the Lisbon strategy. After Lisbon, we therefore launched a programme that we call ‘i2i’: the Innovation 2010 Initiative. We have already agreed loans amounting to 24 billion euros for this programme. To be more precise: 7 billion for training, 10 billion for research and development and 7 billion for the diffusion of new technologies. We fully intend to continue along that road and, as Mr Lipietz said, make a contribution that goes beyond words and declarations of principle, one that extends to funding some very specific projects, while at the same time trying, as Mrs van den Burg stressed, to deploy new financial instruments. As part of this i2i programme, we have already adopted new types of loan, with risk sharing. In cooperation with the Commission, we are now working on formulae that would allow us to go even further down that route, to take more risks, since these are areas which, by their very nature, require the funding provider to agree to assume part of the risk.
I have also noted the stress some of you place on small and medium-sized businesses. I can see that my time is running out, so I will respond very briefly. I can confirm that, so far as global loans are concerned – a subject which has already been discussed in committee – we are renegotiating the contracts with the intermediary banks to ensure that they really do pass on to the final beneficiary the financial advantage we are giving them. I also note the emphasis on microcredit. I note the concerns about the environment and I can assure you that the report we present to the Board of Directors on all the projects we are asked to finance includes a section – sometimes a very detailed section if the project requires this – on the environmental impact of the project we are being asked to finance.
Finally, a word about our activities outside the European Union. These must in fact be placed in the context of the European Union’s new approach to external policy. As Mrs Zimmer briefly mentioned, the aim is to combine the resources of the Commission, the Member States and the European Investment Bank better in order to make our development assistance more effective and involve us more directly in the pursuit of the Millennium Goals.
To Mr Seppänen I will simply say that we agree entirely with his suggestion concerning the guarantee fund. As to the rebalancing and the chart, that is not for us to decide, but the Council, which gives us mandates concerning different regions."@en1
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