Outside the EU, the EIB operates under various mandates. In December 2006, the European Council approved a new EIB External Lending Mandate (ELM) for 2007-2013 . The ELM provides overall up to EUR 27.8 billion of EU guarantees for providing loans to projects in countries outside the EU. This represents an increase of over EUR 7 billion compared to the previous mandate.

There are however major concerns surrounding the ELM, which include its overt commitment to EU “energy security” and to the promotion of the private sector.

The European Investment Bank has specific obligations in its mandates to achieve social and environmental goals beyond the financial bottom line, including “reducing poverty with the objective of sustainable development” and “the improvement or protection of the environment”.

In practice, however, the EIB has been involved in some of the most egregious and destructive large-scale projects funded by international financial institutions (IFIs) in recent years.

The right to information – for the public and other stakholders – plays a crucial role in promoting a range of important social values. Information has been described as the ‘oxygen of democracy’. Yet, for decades the EIB has remained a closed and non-transparent institution, responding mainly to its clients and disregarding both its duty of transparent and participatory decision-making as well as the value of information and views coming from stakeholders impacted by and/or interested in its actions.

The EIB is exceptional among the major public international financial institutions in that it does not commit itself to a binding set of operational environmental and social policies.

Environmental and social standards in international lending have been set up in order to ensure that investments do not harm the environment or local communities. Although they can often be functionally inadequate and poorly implemented, they do at least provide some framework for analysing project impacts and mitigation measures. The EIB, despite its frequent but tellingly abstract commitments to the ‘highest possible standards’, lacks these concrete commitments or benchmarks. Nor does it possess a culture of public disclosure of substantive information relating to projects.