United in Diversity? Interests, Preferences, and Patterns of Engagement of Public Development Banks in the Implementation of the EU Budget

Abstract

This chapter traces the emergence and expansion of the use of EU budgetary means for financial instruments inside the EU from the 1980s onwards and its implications for the field of European development banking. It details how an initial focus on cooperation between the EIB and the EU Commission gave way to a diversification of cooperation partners for the implementation of financial instruments, now including national development banks. As financial instruments grew both in size and number, their attractiveness and importance for these development banks increased. The chapter details the tensions between the EIB and the national development banks in their lobbying attempts to structure access to these funds. These tensions came to the fore in the negotiations of the InvestEU fund in 2018, when the European Commission stripped the EIB of its unique access to the direct EU guarantee, instead opening up 25 percent of it to NDBs.