President Calviño: Investing in a shared future

Thank you very much for joining us this afternoon. Thank you very much to the Brookings Institution for organising this debate and generally for providing a space, a forum for people to debate, to discuss, to exchange views and to try to build a better, a stronger, a more peaceful future for all of us. It is a great pleasure to kickstart this week's very intense meetings with this exchange with the audience.  

Now, we are gathering at a moment where it's quite clear that the tectonic plates on which the global order was based for the past 80 years are shifting. And these shifts are quite deep and fast, and they generate conflict in some areas and gaps in others. The escalation of the conflict in the Middle East, geopolitical tensions, economic uncertainty, these are realities that are stopping the world, that are marking the world, that are waking us up every day. And I think that at moments like this, it is more important than ever that we design and that people see that there's another path forward.  

And this is the first message that I would like to share with you today. There is another way. There is a path that moves away from conflict and is built on cooperation, not on confrontation. It is a path where we work together with our partners, because together, we can achieve much more than each of us individually. And that, I think, is the prevalent mood for all of us gathering this week for the Spring Meetings.  

I know that President Stubb was here before in this podium speaking, the president of Finland, I should say, ex Vice-President of the European Investment Bank that I am honoured to lead right now. And I'm quite sure that he sent the same message. We have to base this new global order on cooperation, on respect. We need to work together in the right direction.  

The other feeling I sense around us, is one of determination. Determination to rally our forces, all multilateral development banks working as a system, a determination to try to build bridges, to find ways to talk to each other with respect in a constructive manner, because these meetings at the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank Group are a great opportunity to strengthen the way we work together in contributing also to reinforce the global safety net. Combining our strengths, working as a system and at scale, we can help deliver financial stability and resilience where it is most needed. And this is more than an aspiration, this is actually already happening.  

In the last years, we have improved the synergies and the coordination between the multilateral institutions so that we are more efficient in delivering positive impact on the ground around the world. We have heard the call for reform, another subject, another issue that surely is going to be debated this week extensively here in Washington. And we're more and more aligning our strategies, sharing risks, relying on each other's standards and procurement systems, and mobilising private capital at scale.  

And this corporation is already allowing us to move faster, to reduce duplication, remove overlaps, and to maximise the positive impact for our partner countries. Actually, I had a meeting earlier today with Ajay Banga where we were discussing these issues. I had a meeting with Kristalina Georgieva, we were discussing these issues. How can we be more effective? How can we work better together as a system? And by the end of the week, on Friday, we will have a meeting with all fellow multilateral development institutions to see how we can take this to the next stage. 

So, one key idea that I would like to leave with you is this idea of strong partnerships to design this more positive way forward for the world.  

Now, to illustrate this corporation, this week, we will be signing a number of agreements, the European Investment Bank, having to do with water, for example, joining the Water Forward Initiative, with an EIB pledge to provide 300 million people with water security. And that is a great contribution to the overall target of covering one billion people by 2030.  

Global health is also a top priority for the EIB. We support health infrastructures, life sciences, vaccine production around the world. Actually, this week, alongside our partners, we will sign and we will contract a financing contract for a truly groundbreaking project in the sector, which is the first end-to-end multi-vaccine manufacturing hub in South Africa. And this comes after the previous agreements to finance vaccine production facilities in Senegal, in Ghana, in Rwanda. 

And that is a model of cooperation. We're doing that together with the World Bank Group. We're also working together with the private sector and with the Vaccine Alliance and the World Health Organization to make a difference on global health. 

I wanted to mention and to share this example just to show how we are walking the talk. This is not just words. This week here in Washington, we will be signing agreements that illustrate the important role of multilateral institutions to support growth and prosperity around the world.  

And this brings me to my second message, which is that cooperation must translate into systemic impact at scale, because corporation is a nice word, but it only matters if it does deliver at scale and with speed. In this fast-moving world, we need systems that work efficiently. And that requires more than public resources alone.  

And that's why another of the issues that we will be discussing, not only this week, but in the coming months, is how to mobilise private capital, so that we can bring the private sector to also support these shared goals, these common public goods that should shape the world of tomorrow. 

And that involves money, but it also involves data and information.  

So, today in my meeting with Ajay Banga, we were also highlighting the importance of the global emerging markets database, a database incorporating the data for the past 40 years of all multilateral institutions, and also some national financial institutions, for development that provides a wealth of data, a very important input for rating agencies, and for private investors. And this database is telling a very powerful story. Default rates in emerging markets are comparable to those in advanced economies, and recovery rates are often higher. And that is a very important message to mobilise the private sector, to mobilise private investment, to foster development and progress around the world.  

So, we are a very proud member of the multilateral development bank family, and we feel that our contribution is not just based on the financing and co-financing of individual projects, but the assets and the information that we can share throughout the world to mobilise private investment. 

Next year, the European Investment Bank Group will chair this family of multilateral development institutions, and that's a responsibility we take very seriously, especially in the current geopolitical context.  

And we will be discussing this week what are going to be our priorities. Private sector mobilisation surely is going to be one of them, water and sustainability, another, global health, human capital will be a third one. We were also discussing today with Kristalina the importance of artificial intelligence, the impact on our economies, on our societies, and of course, critical raw materials, an emerging subject that is also quite important for the strategic autonomy of our economies.  

And this brings me to my third and final point, and that is the power of values. The European Investment Bank is in a somewhat unique position in today's world. Our shareholders are the European Union's 27 Member States, neither more nor less.  

And they have unanimously endorsed our strategic orientation, we were just discussing that, for our operations inside the EU, but also our operations around the world, our global operations, which represent around 10% of our annual financing volumes, which last year reached, in total, €100 billion.  

So, our activities outside the EU are fully aligned with the objective of building win-win partnerships, fostering development and prosperity, but also aligned with European priorities and with European values, so that we put our money where our mouth is. Every project we finance is actually underpinning and representing this commitment. Every school which is rebuilt in Ukraine, every girl that is vaccinated against cervical cancer in Angola, every woman that is provided access to contraception and at the end of the day is put on the driving seat of their own life around the world. Every drop of clean water in Bangladesh, The Gambia, Jordan, every metro line which is financed by the European Investment Bank in Viet Nam or India, or clean energy projects in Egypt, in Central America, loans helping farmers in Côte d'Ivoire or Sierra Leone, connecting remote regions in Cameroon, we feel that each and every one of our projects is supporting prosperity. It is also reflecting European values, our shared values. 

And through this kind of projects, we are making a concrete contribution to peace, to growth, to global stability and global security. Let me conclude my introductory remarks. I know that we'll have a very intense and interesting, I hope, exchange with you and also with the audience in a moment, just to make a public pledge and stress this public commitment by the European Investment Bank, the financing arm of the European Union.  

We are really committed to continue to build win-win partnerships. I want to stress this idea, those partnerships where we all win, where it is not necessary for someone to win that somebody else is losing. Partnerships that are based on mutual respect, on democracy, on peace, this is the right thing to do, but it is also the smart thing to do because investing in open trade, rules-based trade, in growth, ensuring that this prosperity is sustainable also from the environmental point of view, ensuring that we have fair and stable societies around the world, and in particular in the neighbourhood of Europe, of course, ensuring that we can diversify supply chains, that we can strengthen security, protect health, global health, expand markets, create good quality jobs, this means at the end of the day, investing in our future, building lasting, as the motto goes for this week's meetings, but also shared prosperity.  

Let me leave it here. Thank you very much.