All of a sudden, the EIB has shot to the top of everyone’s Christmas card list.

European Commission president Barroso is flagging the EIB as part of a European framework to deal with the economic crisis.

Industry commissioner Verheugen wants a EUR 40 billion “soft loan” package from the EIB to help the European car industry belatedly gets its act together on CO2 emissions (T&E comprehensively rebutted Verheugen’s “no subsidies” apologia on Wednesday, but no sign of a link to their release).

And UK finance minister Darling has been pushing UK banks to make the most of the EIB’s increased global loans facility.

Only you don’t hear mention of “global loans” in such coverage, but there’s a lot of money getting talked up, there are clearly a lot of needy SMEs out there - so let’s get the money out the door as quickly as we can, no messing about. Which sums up the way global loans at the EIB have been done for many years, as this new clip from Counter Balance depicts. The cartoon’s focus is on outside EU lending, but the same applies within the EU.

RELEASE!

Steve Kretzmann at Oil Change International has gone for the World Bank’s jugular with some unrelenting exegesis of the Bank’s 2007-2008 energy lending: World Bank Group lending to coal, oil and gas is up 94 percent from 2007, comprising over 3 billion dollars of public subsidiy. The global climate change prize fighter’s lending on coal has rocketed by 256 percent in the last year. Once Steve’s finished conducting some real world auditing of the Bank’s commitments to renewables in FY2008, he arrives at 280 million dollars.

The analysis from Oil Change and other NGOs relies on the World Bank’s own figures. What to make, then, of one footnote in the ever-expanding bailout? The EIB’s Global Loan system of lending via commercial banks to small and medium-sized enterprises is to be “front-loaded” (Gordon Brown’s phraseology) with 30 billion euros, representing a doubling of the bank’s lending to SMEs.

Such a sum may not strike you as so exceptional in the current economic climate. And, for the time being, SMEs have just about nowhere else to turn to for credit. But with ever more put-upon taxpayers naturally demanding greater democratic control of economic life (”May we respectfully inquire about what strings are attached to this latest multi-billion public money hand-out?”), just what kind of businesses are going to benefit from this 30 billion euro EIB package?

As things stand, not only are there no guiding thematic principles (eg preferences for green technology) underpinning the EIB’s Global Loans mechanism, the EIB itself does not know where the billions are ending up. Bankwatch has tried to determine if good things are getting funded under EIB Global Loans, but the system spat us out fairly comprehensively. In a recent drive to gain more transparency publicity than the latest celebrity see-through dress, the EIB has agreed to ensure that SME beneficiaries now know that their credit line has indeed originated in Luxembourg. Other than that, we’re all in the dark - so if you work for or know of an SME that has enjoyed an EIB loan or is looking for one, comments below please.

Front-loading the EIB in such opaque circumstances appears to do little to dispel public concerns about corporate free-loading. How prudent is that?