Building a hidden investment state? The European Investment Bank, national development banks and European economic governance

Daniel Mertens (1) , Matthias Thiemann (2)

1 Institut für Politikwissenschaft
2 CEE - Centre d'études européennes et de politique comparée (Sciences Po, CNRS)

The European Commission’s Investment Plan for Europe and the enduring economic crisis has brought state-owned development banks again to the fore of public and scholarly debate in Europe. This article proposes to place these banks’ activities and recent institutional co-operation in the context of European integration and assumes a historical perspective on European economic governance and development banking. Most importantly, it argues that the European Investment Bank has become a centre of gravity in long-standing political attempts to increase the investment firepower of the European Union. Based on detailed process-tracing analysis through publicly available data and interview material, the article delineates a gradual process of institutional innovation and network formation that advanced since the late 1980s and culminated in recent post-crisis policy processes. The contemporary visibility of development banking in Europe, we conclude, follows from these and is representative of a nucleus for a – somewhat hidden – European investment state, whose reach and stability, however, is yet to be determined.

Keywords: EIB; EIF; economic governance; European Commission; Investment Plan for Europe

Domains: Humanities and Social Sciences; Sociology; Humanities and Social Sciences; Economics and Finance

Daniel Mertens, Matthias Thiemann. Building a hidden investment state? The European Investment Bank, national development banks and European economic governance. Journal of European Public Policy, 2019, 26 (1), pp.P. 23-43. ⟨10.1080/13501763.2017.1382556⟩. ⟨hal-01621785⟩