Our Mission is to further the objectives of the European Union by making long-term finance available for sound investment.
The EIB Group promotes Corporate Responsibility through its mission and activities in the service of the European Union, through the way it implements these and through its internal management.
The EIB attaches great importance to engaging with civil society and building cooperative relations with its representatives.
The founding mandate commits EBRD to promote in the full range of its activities, environmentally sound and sustainable development (Article 2.1vii). In addition to this proactive approach to environmental sustainability, the Bank shall apply sound banking principles to all its operations (Article 13i). The EBRD recognizes that sustainable development is a fundamental aspect of sound business management and that the pursuit of economic growth and a healthy environment are inextricably linked. It has ranked sustainable development among the highest priorities of its activities[1].
EBRD operations support and advance appropriate environmental and health and safety standards throughout its region of operations. It attaches particular importance to activities that promote energy and resource efficiency, waste reduction, resource recovery and recycling, the use of cleaner technologies and the promotion of renewable resources. As a result EBRD has developed policies to guide its operations in a number of sectors, including energy, transport, agriculture, telecommunications, municipal development and finance. The Bank applies a systematic environmental assessment procedure where projects are reviewed to determine whether they meet the Bank's policy requirements and if so in which way the environmental issues should be incorporated in operation financing, planning and implementation. EBRD's environmental procedures ensure that each investment operation is environmentally sustainable and incorporates as one of its key principles that of the polluter pays.
EBRD operations are structured to meet national and EU environmental standards, or where EU standards do not exist, national and World Bank standards. EBRD aims to assist its countries of operations to adopt sound environmental policies as delineated in Article 130(r) in the Treaty on the European Union. EBRD operates in countries that generally have enacted environmental legislation aligned to good international practice, and most of them have signed Association or Partnership and Co-operation Agreements with the EU. This means that EBRD operations in these countries comply with full EU standards as these various agreements provide for approximation of their legislation towards full EU environmental standards and, in the case of Candidate Countries, for a progressive full compliance with EU standards in view of their future accession.
[1] EBRD Environmental Policy, July 2003
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