EIB President Werner Hoyer and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres met on the side lines of the United Nations Financing for Development Forum in New York this week to discuss how the EIB can support the delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), help improve the functioning of Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) and further strengthen the EIB’s own partnerships with UN bodies.
President Hoyer told Secretary-General Guterres that the establishment of EIB Global – the EIB Group’s arm for international development and partnerships–is already helping to build stronger and more effective relationships with key UN partners, such as the WHO, to strengthen primary healthcare; the IFAD, to boost food security; and the UNDP, to support reconstruction in Ukraine.
After the meeting at the UN headquarters, President Hoyer said, “My sense is stronger than ever that our two institutions are completely in tune with each other, especially on the importance of delivering the SDGs and in helping to mobilise development actors to work together.”
The EIB’s partners in New York – including the United Nations, the European Union, and Member State representatives stationed there – stressed the importance of keeping up momentum to deliver on the SDGs and global climate ambitions.
President Hoyer travelled to the United Nations Financing for Development Forum directly from the World Bank Group-IMF Spring Meetings in Washington D.C., where issues including slowing global growth, the war in Ukraine and MDB reform topped the agenda. He was joined in New York by a small EIB delegation that included the acting managing director of EIB Global, Markus Berndt.
During the two-day Forum, events like the SDG Investment Fair and a special session of the United Nations Economic and Social Council put an emphasis on the need for the public and private sectors to team up on the delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals. The EIB shared experiences such as the deployment of innovative ways to crowd in private sector investors to meet the level of finance needed and the scale of challenges facing the global community.
President Hoyer singled out the EIB’s role in the Blue Mediterranean Partnership, launched at COP27 with the Union for the Mediterranean, the EBRD and the European Commission, to support the blue economy in the Mediterranean region.
President Hoyer also highlighted the work of the Clean Ocean Initiative at a the “What solutions can sustainable ocean finance offer?” side event, organised by Portugal and the OECD.
“We address plastic pollution before it reaches the sea. We already doubled the financing target of this initiative, from €2 billion to €4 billion by 2025. We will get there,” he said.
Presenting the EIB’s recently approved EU for Ukraine (EU4U) Initiative to UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner, President Hoyer and Berndt stressed how crucial the partnership with the UNDP had been for EIB teams in being able to respond so quickly with rebuilding and support efforts in Ukraine after the invasion of Russia in February 2022. With a new pipeline of projects for schools, hospitals and housing now being prepared, it is expected that the EIB and UNDP in Ukraine will once again team up to ensure investments are translated into concrete projects in this highly challenging environment.
A key element of the EU4U Initiative - is the creation of a dedicated fund that will provide credit enhancement and investment grants for EIB lending supported by €100 million of technical assistance to help prepare the projects on the ground.
Meanwhile, the head of the EU delegation to the UN, Olof Skoog, and his team organised a number of meetings with fellow EU Member States’ permanent representatives to the UN, as well as a number of ambassadors from Africa, to explain the EIB’s role as the EU Bank in supporting the EU’s Global Gateway Strategy, whose primary aim is to invest in projects that support climate action, improve health, digital connectivity, and access to green energy and transport.
At the heart of the EU’s Global Gateway offer is of course the delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals – that’s why we at EIB Global are so aligned with the approach. We aim to mobilise at least €100 billion of investment under Global Gateway by 2028, working alongside our regional partners around the globe and our fellow EU institutions and member states,” Berndt said.