The European Investment Bank to the rescue? COVID-related lending as incremental change

Abstract

ABSTRACT The European Investment Bank (EIB) was officially part of a coordinated European Union (EU) strategy to address the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, we argue that despite the worst socio-economic crisis to hit most European countries since the Second World War, the EIB failed to deviate from a set path that delimited acceptable forms of lending. We apply a historical institutionalist analysis to explain how and why the EIB continued to engage in principally low risk lending activities via the commercial banking sector, and failed to significantly increase lending to the public health sector.