A matter of credible guarantee: the EU’s Global Gateway initiative and the European Investment Bank’s role in development finance

The European Investment Bank (EIB) has become the single largest institutional investor and a primary implementing partner of the European Union’s (EU’s) Global Gateway (GG) initiative. Yet the EIB has also long been a risk-averse financial institution, focused upon defending its Triple-A credit rating and lending principally within the EU. Prior to the 2020s, the EIB never referred to itself as a development bank. How then is the bank’s important role in the GG and increased international development lending to be best understood? What implications does this role and increased lending have for its relationship with the European Commission? Applying elements of historical institutionalism, we explain this development in terms of incremental policy change – and notably layering – to the guarantee structure of EIB lending. This structure, which has long under-pinned higher risk lending both within the EU and to third countries, was adopted and expanded for the GG.