A Dual Entity: The European Investment Bank and Its Lending Policy from Its Origins to the Late 1970s

Abstract

By reconstructing the lending policy of the European Investment Bank (EIB) from its inception in 1958 to the late 1970s, this article shows that, until the 1970s, the EIB did not pursue EEC (European Economic Community) policies but policy elaborated at the national level. The individual member states’ political priorities and preferences played a key role in shaping the loan operations and the bank's loans were used rather more individualistically by each community country in pursuit of national aims. This situation started to change in the 1970s when internal and external developments to the EEC redeployed and refocused the methods and objectives of the bank so that lending progressively became the result of the interplay between EEC institutions. Gradually, the EIB moved away from being a mere member state's tool to pursue individual national policies, transformed into an EEC policy-driven bank and it became the financial arm of the EEC.