Mr President, Mr Maystadt, I should like to thank you, Mr Maystadt, very much for the kindness and readiness to help which you and your colleagues have shown to me and the committee. It made the work considerably easier. I also wish to thank my colleagues. The role of the EIB has been of topical interest in the debate in recent years, and criticisms have been made. These have mainly been targeted at deficiencies when it comes to environmental issues, openness and transparency. The EIB has understood the criticism, and significant changes have taken place. For this, you, Mr Maystadt, and your colleagues deserve our recognition. The analysis for the year is in many respects a follow-up to the sterling work carried out a year ago by Mr Lipietz. A number of the views put forward at that time are being repeated now. As is well known, the most important issue for the EU is enlargement. This involves a fundamental change constituting a major challenge both for the candidate countries and the current Member States. Today, most EIB loans go to different types of regional development project within the EU. That is certainly fully compatible with Statutes of the EIB, but future enlargement makes it necessary to reconsider this distribution of resources. There must be an increase in the future Member States’ share of the total loans. Solidarity on the part of the EU must also, of course, extend to include third countries that until now have been recipients of EIB loans. Among these are the Balkan countries, the Mediterranean countries and the ACP countries. Now it is also Russia’s turn. There is also a need for discussion concerning which less developed countries the EIB is mandated by the Council to support and concerning whether, for example, the 49 least developed countries are not in fact in greater need than the ACP countries traditionally supported by the EU. In the information society, economic growth and an improved standard of living are not only the results of constructing new roads and factories, but also of education, innovation, new technology, e-commerce and the development of other knowledge-intensive sectors. In my view, this has to be reflected to a greater extent in the EIB’s activities. It is important that the EIB should continue to strengthen its support for small and medium-sized enterprises. There are clear opportunities for growth in this area. The EIB needs to become more active in making SMEs more aware of the possibilities that already exist for granting such loans. From having been a rather closed institution, the EIB has begun to change its attitude to information and transparency. Contact with democratically elected representatives at local and regional levels is important. There is a knowledge of the projects at local level. Contact with non-governmental organisations has improved, and the bank’s web site has also improved. The EIB has published a list of projects at the assessment stage. In my opinion, it would be good if all the public documents from the internal evaluation unit were published on the Net. As matters stand, the EIB is supervised by its Board of Governors, that is to say by the 15 Finance Ministers, but it lacks prudential supervision by a competent authority. The committee has discussed the possibility of letting the European Central Bank, or ECB, exercise supervision over the EIB because the EC Treaty provides for the Council to give the ECB specific tasks of prudential supervision. If the Council does not want to give the ECB this remit, the issue should be clarified at the next Intergovernmental Conference, with the objective of establishing proper prudential supervision of the EIB’s activities. In order to improve the way in which the Bank fulfils its obligation to render accounts, the committee proposes that the external Auditors’ Committee forward its findings to the European Parliament, as well as to the EIB’s Board of Governors. Mention might be made of the fact that the EIB has already shown a willingness to cooperate more closely with OLAF. The environment is the issue which the NGOs are most interested in. These issues received much attention in the Lipietz report last year. I believe that the EIB has become more aware of environmental issues and that the Bank’s support for environmental projects has increased considerably. Another key factor is the EIB’s environmental assessment capacity. At present, the EIB has only one person responsible for coordinating environmental issues, while the project teams are composed of engineers and economists who have received additional environmental training. In my opinion, more staff are required in this area. More trained environmental experts should be appointed or contracted to review the environmental impact assessments correctly. There are, therefore, many demands upon the European Investment Bank. If all of these needs are to be met, it is necessary to increase the capital of the Bank. In line with what applies to commercial banks able to handle greater risks, the Member States should, for example, consider reviewing the ratio of capital borrowed by the Bank to capital of its own, with the purpose of including the EIB’s reserves. Mr President, I should like to welcome the Commissioner to the House. Finally, I want to comment on the amendments that have come in. I am able to support Amendments Nos 1, 3, 4 and 6 from Mr Lipietz etc. They do not change the content of the report but highlight the environmental issues and the issues concerning openness and transparency. I cannot, however, support Amendment No 2, which I find unnecessarily far-reaching. I am only able to support Amendment No 5 as a supplement to Paragraph 30.

Political group: ELDR