On 19 October 2022, EIB President Werner Hoyer gave the opening speech at the Finance in Common Summit 2022.


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>@EIB

Ladies and gentlemen,

It is my great pleasure to be here with you today and a great honour for the European Investment Bank to co-organise  this event, for the first time in Africa, with the African Development Bank.

Thank you, Akin [Adesina] for your leadership, and thank you Remy [Rioux] for your role and passion in creating the Finance in Common movement.

The timing and the spirit of this gathering are really crucial. COP27 is just a few weeks ahead of us. There are huge expectations. And there are increasing signals of a looming global crisis.

As it has been mentioned in DC last week by Larry Summers, while “we have the most complex, diverse, cross-functional challenges”, “the fire department is still at the station”.

So, it is our responsibility and opportunity to act now:

  • to walk the talk when it comes to climate action and sustainable development goals…
  • to tackle today’s compounded challenges
  • and to show that the Public Development Banks’ division of the fire department is already on the case…

Our Governments, our shareholders, are under huge pressure…and we all know that in situations like the one we are experiencing today, investment suffers. Forward-looking initiatives suffer and more than anything else, multilateralism suffers.  

As public development banks, we have a special role to play to serve our public mission – and we can pool our financial and technical resources and our ideas in a way to serve it better.

Together, we manage some 23 trillion dollars of assets and represent up to 2.3 trillion dollars a year in annual investment, approximately 12% of the global total. Together, we can and must do a difference.

I believe, ladies and gentlemen, that there are three areas to step up our impact:

First, we must be more forward looking. We need to think about investment projects that are future-proof and will work tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.

Adapting to a changing climate, anticipating the structural shifts in our economies, adopting the latest technologies and standards.

Look at climate action: in 2020, MDBs committed 66 billion dollars to it, over half of which was channelled to developing countries. And last year we did even more, exceeding the goal for 2025 set at the request of the UN Secretary General in 2019. In 2021, the volume of climate finance committed by MDBs hit 82 billion dollars, of which more than half – 51 billion dollars, went to low- and middle-income countries.

Some might be tempted, in the current climate to back paddle on climate action and commitments. I believe we need to stay on course on this. This is not because of ideological reasons, this is because of economic reasons…

We must dispel the myths holding back the energy transition. Deploying renewables and storage infrastructure is cheaper and much faster to roll out than drilling for oil or gas.

Our success, I believe, will be measured by our skills in avoiding stranded assets and in supporting the ingenuity of our people and businesses.  

Second, focusing more and more on productive investments. With high debt-to-GDP ratios, and huge investment needs, public banks should look for the greatest impact.

We need quality projects, we need to apply smart economics like investing in women and investing sectors, like renewables, that create jobs and serve multiple policy objectives.

As public institutions, we need to go the extra mile in thinking how to generate more value and make our value proposition attractive for private investors, crowding them in. We need their creativity, their risk-taking attitude, and their financial firepower.

Third - and this is linked to both my previous points – we need global solutions and initiatives. We cannot afford that measures and projects in one country come at the detriment of others, whether this is about energy, vaccines or food, we need global schemes that protect the most vulnerable while serving common objectives.

For all this to happen we need a new, strong partnership model, forged on trust and respect and respect begins with knowing and listening to each other.  I can ensure that the European Investment Bank, and our development arm, EIB Global, are listening and eager to learn and share. And we are ready to be, within Team Europe, functional for strong, strategic partnerships between the African Union and the European Union, in climate and energy.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are here in Abidjan to walk the talk – let’s be pragmatic and ambitious. Let’s bring our best people together for the identification, design and financing of the multitude of projects that we will need to make – collectively- an impact. And, as a collective, I hope that this Summit will keep on growing as a platform of doers..

Thank you for your attention.