EIB Group President Nadia Calviño delivered an address to the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) during the 2025 European Gender Equality Week in Brussels on 5 November.
Honourable Members of the European Parliament, dear colleagues and friends,
It is a great pleasure to address you today on a subject that I am really passionate about – gender equality.
It is one of the European Union’s basic values. A driver for economic development, higher incomes, more efficient and effective businesses, stronger societies, more stability and security.
Estimates of growth and job creation from closing the gender gap make a very strong case for private and public investment to drive this policy forward.
The data are clear – companies with diverse leadership perform better.
Investing in women represents a real opportunity: in fact, better serving women as customers is worth an estimated $700 billion globally for financial services providers.
Supporting investments that empower women and promote female entrepreneurship is the right thing to do and it is also the smart thing to do.
But paradoxically, we are at a point in history where words like, gender, women, equity and inclusion have somehow become revolutionary in some places.
And that makes us at the European Investment Bank (EIB) Group even more determined to stay the course and to support European policies in all our projects.
We have embedded gender equality and women’s economic empowerment into our business model, fully aligned with the Commission’s Roadmap for Women’s Rights, which the EIB proudly endorsed last month, alongside the European Parliament.
In the last five years, we have doubled our financing for gender equality, to exceed €3.5 billion in 2024, improving women’s access to credit and supporting projects that close gender gaps.
Outside the European Union, the EIB is supporting female entrepreneurship – for example in farming and fishing communities in Mauritania and West Africa – as well as women’s health.
A few days ago, in partnership with the European Commission and the World Health Organisation, we rolled out the first ever national vaccination campaign against cervical cancer in Angola.
Two million girls between the ages of nine and twelve will be protected through this campaign, giving a generation of young women new hope and opportunity.
And this is something truly to be proud of as Europeans!
That’s not all – we are also helping to expand clean cooking in East Africa and improving access to contraceptives and healthcare for women worldwide, also in partnership with the Gates Foundation.
We recently expanded our Sustainability Awareness Bonds to include gender equality objectives, using the power of capital markets to finance these projects.
And also inside the EU we are advancing women’s access to finance:
Earlier this year, we launched the Gender Finance Lab for commercial banks. It is the first of its kind in the EU, supporting banks with advisory services, learning programmes and market insights to unlock investment in women entrepreneurs.
So far, 42 European banks have joined the programme.
We also signed the landmark initiative with the Spanish banking group CBNK (formed through the merger of Banco Caminos and Bancofar) to empower women entrepreneurs in Spain’s pharmaceutical sector. And we announced partnerships with Banca Etica and Crédit Agricole to improve access to finance for women-led SMEs in Italy and France.
And through the European Investment Fund (EIF) – our subsidiary for SMEs – the Empowering Equity Programme is actively bringing more women into Europe’s venture capital sector.
Beyond finance, we regularly gather Women Leaders in Climate Action, and we have just hosted the EIB Group Summit for Women Leaders in Life Sciences in Vienna.
Because when women thrive, whole communities thrive!
A final thought: we need to be bold. Inclusive action to support women’s equality is more important than ever within the EU and beyond.
As members of the European Parliament’s ECON Committee, you have a unique role in shaping Europe’s financial architecture. So we count on your continued support under the next Multiannual Financial Framework to further align policy frameworks, to ensure regulatory incentives actively promote inclusion and equality, and of course, to ensure that we put our money where our mouth is!
These are critical ingredients for Europe’s competitiveness and growth.
I am confident that together we can build a future that reflects the very best of our Union.
Thank you.