EIB Group Activity Report 2023 E-Book

European Investment Bank

• Herausgeber: European Investment Bank
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 122

Beschreibung

A blueprint presents drawings, dimensions and notes. This report draws vivid pictures of the beneficiaries of European Investment Bank projects in 2023. It includes data on the dimensions of our massive overall investment and the importance of our loans to each of our beneficiaries during the year. It notes the EU policies and expertise that lead us to make each of our investments.

Leseprobe

2023ACTIVITYREPORT

About the European Investment Bank

The European Investment Bank Group is the EU bank and the world’s biggest multilateral lender. We finance sustainable investment in small and medium-sized enterprises, innovation, infrastructure, and climate and environment. We have financed Europe’s economic growth for six decades and are at the forefront of EU crisis response, leading the world in climate investment and backing development of the first COVID-19 vaccine. We are committed to triggering €1 trillion in investment in climate and environmental sustainability to combat climate change by the end of this decade. About 10% of all our investment is outside the European Union, where our EIB Global branch supports Europe’s neighbours and global development.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

2023 HIGHLIGHTS Lending and impact data

THE EIB IN YOUR COUNTRY Lending by country

THE EIB IN YOUR WORLD Lending beyond the European Union

DESIGNS FOR TRANSFORMATIVE DEVICES

Germany: When paperwork is life and death

Spain: Science fiction to science fact

Netherlands: Ever-increasing circles

European Tech Champions Initiative: Venture capital to ease scale-up financing

Italy and Ireland: Innovations you should hear about

Poland: Probing for breast cancer

Spain: Powered by the sun

Italy: Nice, good and quick

Netherlands: A stay of chick execution

DESIGNS FOR A GREEN EUROPE

Poland: Green and humane

Netherlands: A sustainable hospital

Belgium: Masonry blocks that eat carbon

Greece: Working with nature, not against it

Spain: A fresh idea

Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania: Gigawatt on the roof

Spain: Repowering Europe

DESIGNS FOR AN ENGINE OF EQUALITY

Italy: Boosting learning, saving energy

Spain: Schools for the suburbs

Germany and Italy: New trains, new lines, new technology

France: Charging up

Netherlands: Roll with the robots

Bulgaria and Portugal: All hands on deck

Lithuania: Nature’s highways

Spain: Switching tracks on harassment

DESIGNS FOR A WORLD MAP THAT’S FAIR AND GREEN

In-depth on Kenya: A green model in Africa

Ukraine: We will never abandon them

In-depth on Egypt: Small business by the big river

Serbia: Green X Factor

Morocco: After the quake

BORROWING HIGHLIGHTS: WHERE THE MONEY COMES FROM

Greening the blockchain

GROUP OPERATIONAL PLAN 2024-2026 HIGHLIGHTS

Governance

FOREWORDBY THE PRESIDENT

A blueprint presents drawings, dimensions and notes. Our annual activity report, A Blueprint for Sustainable Living, draws vivid pictures of the beneficiaries of European Investment Bank projects. It includes data on the dimensions of our massive overall investment and the importance of our loans to each of our beneficiaries. It notes the EU policies and expertise that lead us to make each of our investments.

The European Investment Bank’s blueprint for Europe is based on a vision of an innovative future, a green future, a future of equality – and a future that does not end at the borders of the European Union. This report highlights the detailed analysis of technical developments in artificial intelligence, healthcare and biotechnology that lies behind our investments in revolutionary new technologies. It presents our commitment to building a green economy and to backing the new ideas for clean technology that are so desperately needed if we are to contain climate change, worldwide. It illustrates the importance of investment in the infrastructure that moves us from place to place, where our children are educated, and where everyone is safe from harassment. It displays the impact of our work beyond the European Union through in-depth stories of our projects on the ground in partner countries in Africa and elsewhere. And it presents the culmination of 12 years of leadership from Werner Hoyer, whose second term as president ended at the close of 2023. I am proud to be his successor.

From this blueprint, we are already constructing Europe’s future. You can see the evidence in the data on our lending and borrowing. You can look ahead to the massive commitment represented by our Group Operational Plan for the period 2024 to 2026. Everything here illustrates our ambition – to shape this future for the benefit of everybody in Europe, for our neighbours, and for our partners everywhere.

This report illustrates that the European Investment Bank is more crucial to Europe and the world than ever before. I am delighted to become part of this great project as I take on the role of president and enthusiastic about the prospects for the years ahead.

Nadia Calviño

2023 HIGHLIGHTS

THE EIB’S IMPACT

Figures are expected outcomes of financed new operations signed in 2023 for the first time, based on available data at this stage. All figures are unaudited and provisional.

THE EIB IN YOUR COUNTRY

Darker colours signify higher investment as a percentage of GDP.

THE EIB IN YOUR WORLD

The European Investment Bank does not endorse, accept or judge the legal status of any territory, boundaries, colours, denominations or information depicted on this map.

Following EU sanctions against Syria in November 2011, the EIB suspended all loan and advisory activity in the country. However, the EIB is part of the Syria core donor group monitoring the situation under EU and UN co-leadership.

FOR TRANSFORMATIVE DEVICES

“Geopolitical tensions impacted the European innovation ecosystem heavily in 2023 – including its funding. The EIB continued to provide essential support to early-stage and highly innovative companies across Europe, in strategic sectors such as life sciences, space, climate, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing. The EIB has become a clear leader in this crucial market segment. Our direct support allowed many innovative SMEs to stay in Europe, created jobs, and safeguarded know-how that often originates from excellent European universities and research centres. The investment community is looking more and more to the Bank as a potential lead investor. This is exactly the catalyst role that we are aiming for in a segment with a large market gap. ”

Yu Zhang, head of Industry 4.0 and life sciences, EIB

“Our financing has a strong impact on the lives of EU citizens. Investing in research, innovation and development is critical for every sector of the economy. The EIB plays a crucial role in promoting innovative and sustainable projects that drive economic growth and, thus, improve the lives of people in the communities they serve. We are proud of these transactions. ”

Gilles Badot, director, Adriatic Sea and Iberia, EIB

“This year has seen Advisory playing a critical role in supporting individual companies and projects to get prepared for financing, and in supporting the development of a strong ecosystem in key high-tech sectors. We link up promoters, investors and the European Commission. This includes sectors from space to cybersecurity, and hydrogen to defence. ”

Juan Magaña-Campos, head of corporate finance advisory, EIB

Innovators examine the processes that others take for granted. They question them, and they develop a better path. A path so much better that when everyone else sees it they wonder how they could have missed it themselves. The European Investment Bank looks for these innovators, and gives them the tools to create and to transform how we go through our lives. From our hospitals to our breakfast tables, these innovators make our lives better.

WHEN PAPERWORK IS LIFE AND DEATH

A German health startup uses artificial intelligence to cut time spent on medical paperwork and improve patient care

In the early 2010s, Wieland Sommer was a young, enthusiastic radiologist who had just started working in one of Europe’s biggest hospitals, LMU Klinikum in Munich. It didn’t take him long to realise that instead of focusing on his patients, he spent most of his time on paperwork. “My time could have been used better,” he says. Then, he had an idea: use digital technology to standardise reporting and minimise time spent on documentation.

It’s an idea that could have a big impact. After all, the average doctor spends more than a third of their working hours on paperwork. And even though Europe has a better than average ratio of doctors to inhabitants compared to the rest of the world, 40% of these practitioners are close to retirement age. Europe has a looming shortage of physicians, and doctors need to make each hour count.

Radiologists like Sommer are particularly in demand. Due to an ageing population, more and more medical imaging is needed, but over 80% of health systems report radiology shortages. And radiologists lose a lot of time reporting, because of outdated methods of documentation. “We usually start with a blank document,” Sommer says, “look at the images, and dictate our analysis.” Every doctor has their own style and there’s little standardisation.

In 2014, Sommer founded his startup, Smart Radiology. He worked with software engineers to develop templates that could be updated regularly, so that clinicians always have access to the most relevant information.

Digitalising healthcare

After a decade, the company has expanded beyond radiology and rebranded as Smart Reporting. It has more than 80 employees, including a significant number of clinicians, while its software has more than 15 000 users in over 90 countries. The European Investment Bank is supporting Smart Reporting’s expansion with €15 million in venture debt financing, backed by the InvestEU programme, which helps innovative European companies mobilise investment and supports the European Union’s sustainability agenda. “There’s still a lot of efficiency to be gained in the healthcare sector, and we see this software as not only a great solution for that, but also as a step forward for much-needed healthcare digitalisation,” says Gergely Krajcsi, the EU bank loan officer working on the project.

The company says its software can save up to 90% of the time doctors spend on documentation, as well as cutting 30% of the time referring physicians spend interpreting non-standard reports. It’s literally a matter of life and death, after all. Research has shown that introducing standardised reporting in pathology led to a 4.3% reduction in patient mortality. “Another reason why we’re financing the company,” adds Cristina Niculescu, a European Investment Bank life sciences specialist, “is because it has the potential to improve healthcare through a data-driven approach that makes diagnoses easier and more accurate.”

SCIENCE FICTION TO SCIENCE FACT

New graphene brain implant to treat neurological disorders

The idea of implanting computer chips into human brains has a long history in science fiction. A quick search of the Internet Movie Database reveals that there are at least 55 movies and television shows featuring brain implants. Now, however, chip implants in the brain are set to join a growing list of technology that has gone from science fiction to science fact and, perhaps within this decade, will bring revolutionary solutions to meet a growing medical need. Spanish startup INBRAIN is starting human trials of an implantable brain chip made of graphene, a highly conductive revolutionary material that’s 200 times stronger than steel and only one atom thick. “The great advantage of graphene is that it allows us to make a minimally invasive, highly biocompatible chip system that has incredible sensitivity and neural signal resolution with low power requirements,” says Carolina Aguilar, INBRAIN’s chief executive.

Graphene is essentially a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice structure. One million times thinner than the width of human hair, it is a two-dimensional material with exceptional mechanical, electrical and thermal properties. Optically transparent yet dense enough to be impermeable to gases and exceptionally strong, it has great potential in a number of fields, including electronics, energy storage and biomedicine.

INBRAIN’s chip contains a skin-like neural interface processor made of graphene and a wireless rechargeable neural processor that, together with advanced machine learning software, enables neural signals in the brain to be mapped, decoded, and modulated. The system can identify irregular electrical signals in the brain, which in the case of Parkinson’s disease cause uncontrollable shaking, rigidity or postural imbalance. It then emits electrical pulses to modulate these and thereby control symptoms in real time. In the future, the system will also be able to decode thought-to-speech in patients with post-stroke aphasia or other paralysing disorders. “The potential is huge,” says Valeria Iansante, a life sciences specialist at the European Investment Bank, which signed a €20 million venture debt loan to INBRAIN in 2023 to back up potential future cash needs on top of the company’s successful venture capital fundraising. “The potential impact of this technology for the treatment of neurological disorders like Parkinson’s – and also potentially epilepsy or even depression – is so great, we believe they merit the financing now.”

The European Investment Bank is not alone in recognising the potential of INBRAIN’s technology. Europe’s oldest pharmaceutical company, Merck, signed with the company in 2021 to cooperate on bioelectronic vagus nerve therapies to treat chronic diseases, such as inflammatory disorders.

Barcelona-based INBRAIN is a European success story for publicly funded research and Barcelona’s high-tech scene. The company was spun out of the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology in Barcelona, with a research programme that was funded by the European Union’s Graphene Flagship, a €1 billion ten-year research programme launched in 2013 to promote and coordinate graphene research across the European Union.

EVER-INCREASING CIRCLES

Plastic made with fossil fuels is a major contributor to climate change, and plastic waste is a serious environmental problem. Infinity Recycling has picked up the plastic gauntlet

Jeroen Kelder spent most of his career in corporate finance and investment, where he backed small and medium-sized companies and invested in key economic sectors such as healthcare and renewable energy. With the increasing focus on circularity, he realised many of the things he had learnt could be applied to resource transition and, in particular, to plastics. “Only a low percentage of plastic is being recycled in Europe,” says Kelder. “We currently lack the solutions to adequately recycle our end-of-life waste, so a lot of it ends up either incinerated or sent to landfill, which is a pity because 7-9% of the world’s CO2 comes from plastics. Reducing this should be low-hanging fruit.”

The technology to carry out advanced recycling has been around for years, but operations have been “sub-scale, too costly and inefficient. And given the disruptive nature of a transition from a centralised, linear economy to a distributed circular economy, the incumbent industry is unlikely to embrace change,” Kelder says. “What the sector needs is independent risk capital and hands-on support.”

That’s why Kelder came to the European Investment Fund in 2019 to test the thesis of his investment firm, Infinity Recycling. In 2023, the EIF invested €50 million in Infinity Recycling’s Circular Plastics Fund, one of its largest investments in a first-time fund. The result: the fund is well on the way to reaching its €150 million target size.