President Calviño at the EIB Group Forum: Partnering to boost affordable and sustainable housing across Europe

Dear partners and friends, 

It is a great pleasure – and I take this opportunity to say loud and clear that the European Investment Bank has as its top priority to consolidate its role as the climate bank. That means that we will continue to endeavour to mobilise public and private investment in key areas for Europe's security and competitiveness going forward, starting with energy grids and energy infrastructure and interconnectors, the deployment of renewable energy, technological innovation that will maintain Europe's leadership in this area and ensure that climate and competitiveness are just two sides of a coin that will ensure that the green transition is a European success.  

Now, moving from these large energy infrastructures, to something that is much closer to the daily lives of Europeans, a shared challenge throughout the EU – housing.  

Last year I devoted my first 12 months on the job to visit the 27 member states, and one of the most surprising findings was discovering that housing is a challenge for almost all Member States. Very different circumstances, very different demographics, very different growth levels, and yet access to housing, affordable housing, especially for the young, is a shared challenge and is a top political priority for leaders throughout the EU.  

So immediately we engaged with the European Commission -- it's so good that there's a devoted, specific commissioner for housing in the European Commission – to see how we could join our forces and make sure that we would try to tackle, working together, this challenge and support national governments and national key players in this endeavour. 

It is estimated that the European Union needs to build one million more new homes every year to meet the demand. Renovating another five million will help us to lower energy bills for households and to lower emissions contributing to climate change. Furthermore, we need to develop a European industry that is able to build sustainable housing, energy efficient houses, fast and cheaper.  

So here we are. We have three key elements – new building industry at European level, renovation, and new houses, affordable houses especially for the young – that require massive investment. So as the European Investment Bank, if there's one thing that we can do, it's mobilise public and private investment, and I'm so happy to be sharing with you our first response: an action plan that will allow us to increase the scale and impact of our support to Europe's housing sector. We plan to double our financing to an annual six billion euros as of next year in this area, and this will mean around 10 billion euros of financing over the next two years that will be mobilised from the European Investment Bank.  

We plan to extend our whole housing value chain across the EU in a moment, Vice President Tsakiris, who has been leading our housing task force, is going to give some more details, and we want to have this three-pronged approach: mobilising investment for innovation, sustainability and affordability. 

Working in partnership is at the core of our action plan. 

We have big ambitions and we have also big partners and stakeholders that we will be working with from the national promotional banks, that have immediately jumped on the project and are very willing to contribute, to the private sector, the building industry throughout the EU and of course the European Commission. 

I am quite confident that on the basis of the platform that we will be launching precisely in a moment today and by bringing on board all those public and private players that want to be activating the levers to address the housing needs in Europe, we will succeed and we will be able to increase the quality of life of Europeans. 

Once more let me repeat what I said in my introductory remarks: 

I am proud to be European. 

Thank you very much.