Partnerships

Partnerships bring knowledge and expertise, and are important for sharing lessons, insights and best practices. For the Bank, partnerships are key for leveraging resources more effectively, through cofinancing and risk sharing, for instance, and enable CEB to consider investment projects that it might not be able to undertake on its own.

The European Union

The CEB’s relationship with EU institutions is both long-standing and wide-ranging. The CEB’s social mandate, its expertise in areas such as low-income housing and health, as well as addressing refugee-related issues, and its proven track record in leveraging EU grants, have been the basis of intensive and fruitful interactions with the European Commission and European Parliament.

The EU is the CEB’s largest donor, providing €38 million in donor funds in 2022. This dimension of the EU-CEB partnership was strengthened in January 2022, when the Bank passed a new and enlarged compliance test set by the European Commission, the so-called “pillar assessment”, thus reaffirming the CEB’s capability to manage EU funds in accordance with EU standards (see Compliance, page 51).

The importance of this success was demonstrated in November when the CEB signed the InvestEU guarantee agreement, becoming the second implementing partner alongside the European Investment Bank. The guarantee agreement, which is worth up to €159 million and expected to mobilise up to €500 million in loan financing, will unlock investments for social, affordable and student housing; education, employment, and skills; healthcare, long-term care and social care; clean and smart urban mobility; water and wastewater services; and flood protection. It will also support cross-cutting objectives such as gender equality and the social and economic inclusion of vulnerable groups, including persons with disabilities.

500 million euros in loan financing will unlock investments for many essential social objectives thanks to the InvestEU guarantee agreement

InvestEU provides an EU budgetary guarantee to implementing partners to increase their risk-taking capacity and therefore contributes to mobilising public and private investment for the EU’s policy priorities. European Commissioner for the Economy, Paolo Gentiloni, hailed the agreement, saying there is “no more important objective than building a strong social Europe. I am delighted that as of today we have the Council of Europe Development Bank as an InvestEU implementing partner, specifically for social investments.” In welcoming the agreement, which strengthens the CEB’s long-standing collaboration with the European Commission, Governor Carlo Monticelli noted that “by combining the EU guarantee with the CEB´s financing and expertise, we will become even more effective partners of our member countries in their response to today’s daunting social challenges.”

CEB’s partnership with the EU enabled several initiatives in 2022. In April, the CEB, together with representatives from the EC and European Parliament, launched the Slovak component of an innovative pilot project to support affordable housing solutions for Roma, known as Housing and Empowerment for Roma (HERO). The initiative is funded by the European Parliament, managed by the European Commission, and implemented by the CEB, together with local partners in the Slovak Republic, Bulgaria, and Romania (see media release).

(PAFMI) is another CEB-EU initiative which evolved further in the past year. Launched to foster the inclusion of migrants at the local and regional level in EU member states that are also members of the CEB, it is financed by a €3.5 million contribution from the EU. In 2022, through a competitive call for proposals, the CEB selected five migrant inclusion projects to be implemented in the EU, starting in 2023. For more detail, see CEB and Donors Report 2022.

Multilateral development banks and international financial institutions

Joining forces with other international financial institutions (IFIs) and multilateral development banks (MDBs) is important for the CEB’s operations and outreach. The Bank was a signatory to a joint statement issued by MDBs ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference, COP27, held in Egypt in November, reaffirming their commitment to supporting countries in “their low-carbon, climate-resilient transition”. The joint statement set out “critical priorities to deliver high impact outcomes”, including implementing Paris Alignment approaches, boosting adaptation finance and increasing concessional finance.

Also ahead of COP27 the CEB teamed up with other IFIs to launch for the first time a joint video campaign on climate and environmental sustainability, called “Investingfor a greener world”. Through people’s true stories, this professionally produced four-minute video offers a glimpse at how green investment can look after the planet and improve lives.

The CEB continued to pursue co-financing and parallel financing opportunities, in particular with the European Investment Bank (EIB), the World Bank Group and others, in line with respective mandates (see Chapter 1).

Joining forces with other international financial institutions (IFIs) and multilateral development banks (MDBs) is important for the CEB’s operations and outreach

The CEB actively participated as a member in several other networks, such as the MDB Heads of Climate, MDB Heads of Procurement and MDB Infrastructure Co-operation Platform, to name but a few. It is also a key member of the European Long-Term Investors Association (ELTI), a Europe-wide network of 31 European multilateral and national development banks and institutions that promotes long-term investment in close alignment with the objectives and initiatives developed by the EC in order to foster sustainable, smart and inclusive growth and job creation. In addition, the CEB continued its collaboration as a founding member with the Social Bond Working Group of the International Capital Market Association (ICMA), for which it helped develop the Social Bond Principles.

The CEB is an active member and financial contributor of Finance in Common (FiC), a global coalition launched in 2020 to enhance the co-operation across public development banks worldwide to achieve the objectives of Agenda 2030 SDGs and the Paris Agreement on climate. At the 2022 FiC Summit, “Green and just transition for a sustainable recovery” organised by EIB and the African Development Bank, which hosted the event in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire in October, the CEB reiterated the key role social investments can play in reviving and strengthening the resilience of our economies. They also emphasised the importance of a social-climate nexus approach, recognising the interdependence of social and climate considerations, and their importance for actions to address vulnerable populations.

The CEB also confirmed it would continue leading the Coalition for Social Investment, jointly with the French Development Agency (AFD), with the aims of increasing the volume of finance for social investment by public and private actors, and enhancing the diversity and quality of those investments.

The CEB contributes to other FiC coalitions – it endorsed the FiC Human Rights Statement and joined the Coalition on Resilient Cities and Regions, recently launched by the Global Fund for Cities Development.

This international network of local and regional governments is dedicated to designing financing and investment solutions for cities and sustainable urban development. Helping cities become more resilient and inclusive lies at the heart of the CEB’s social mandate. In September 2022 the CEB published “From Community Vulnerability to Resilience: the Experience of European Cities”, a Technical Brief on projects aimed at fostering dialogue and resilience in city neighbourhoods and their communities. The brief was the result of a fruitful collaboration with the OECD and global city networks, such as Local Governments for Sustainability, Resilient Cities Network, and United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), and several European cities. It is available here.

United Nations

The CEB maintained its strategic partnerships with a number of UN agencies, leveraging the UN’s global convening power and expertise: United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), UN Habitat, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) are chief examples.

Co-operationwith the IOM in particular enabled the CEB to act rapidly in response to the Ukraine crisis and channel grant funds straight to vulnerable populations fleeing the war

The surge in refugees and human displacement in 2022 led the CEB to step up its long-standing co-operation with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Co-operation with the IOM in particular enabled the CEB to act rapidly in response to the Ukraine crisis and channel grant funds straight to vulnerable populations fleeing the war.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

The CEB strengthened its co-operation with the OECD in strategic priority areas such as sustainable and inclusive development, migrants and refugees, regions and cities, public and corporate governance and climate finance.

One example led by the OECD is the World Observatory on Subnational Government Finance and Investment (SNG-WOFI), a multi-stakeholder initiative organised jointly with the United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), which is considered as the world’s leading source of internationally comparable data and analysis on multi-level governance and subnational finance frameworks.

The CEB has been a supporting partner of SNGWOFI since 2019; other supporters include the French Development Agency (AFD), the German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ), the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) and the Asian Development Bank. Visit www.sng-wofi.org/

European Alliance for Sustainable and Inclusive Social Housing in France

Since the inception of the alliance in September 2020, the CEB has been co-operating actively with Union sociale pour l’habitat, Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations, acting via its Banque des Territoires, and the European Investment Bank (EIB), to facilitate social housing associations’ access to European funding to support the provision of more and better social housing in France. This operates in accordance with the European Pillar of Social Rights of the European Union and the revised European Social Charter of the Council of Europe.

Wider engagement

The CEB was in regular contact with advocacy groups and think-tanks, such as Bruegel, the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, Eurocities, the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), the Resilient Cities Network, the European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless (FEANTSA) and Housing Europe. Such co-operation helps improve mutual knowledge and understanding of issues, and to shape better responses, including the right kind of technical assistance, to improve the social impact of CEB projects in today’s uncertain times.

©CEB 2023