EIB operations inside the European Union 2017 : results and impact.

EIB OPERATIONS INSIDE THE EU 2017 5 1. Introduction 1.1 Context of the EIB’s operations in 2017 innovation and skills – helping to achieve the Europe 2020 target of 3% of GDP invested in R&D by promoting broad- The framework for the EIB’s current operations is provided band, creating a single digital market in Europe, and support- by the Europe 2020 strategy, the EU’s agenda for growth and ing inn [...] This report is an account of the EIB’s activities inside the EU during 2017, a year during which the Bank was required to take account both of the continuing echoes of the 2008 financial crisis, and of the changing global economic landscape. [...] The Bank of- The Bank measures its success in terms of its contribution to ten supports projects of common interest to several Member EU policy, the quality and soundness of the projects it financ- States that, because of their size or nature, cannot be entirely es, and the technical and financial contribution it makes to financed by the various means available in the countries con- each project u [...] In these situations, it is likely that projects such as new details of the methodology are presented in Annex 1. transport links would only proceed in a piecemeal fashion, and possibly only over a longer period of time, without EIB in- The charts below present the 3PA assessment of the projects volvement, delaying and reducing the scale of the economic supported by the EIB in 2017: and other impac [...] The UK had Svalbard been the fifth largest borrower in 2016, but uncertainty as to The level of lending activity in 2017 can be related to the pop- the future relationship between the UK and the EU, and more ulation size of the various Member States, as illustrated in the specifically the EIB, saw the number of new UK operations map below.