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From the Wieser report to Team Europe: explaining the ‘battle of the banks’ in development finance

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posted on 2023-06-12, 12:59 authored by Dermot HodsonDermot Hodson, David Howarth

The European Union (EU) and its member states are the world’s largest development donor, but the European financial architecture for development suffers from well-documented problems of fragmentation. EU member states’ decision to convene the Wieser Group in April 2019 raised expectations over rationalising the roles of the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). However, the Council of the EU showed little enthusiasm for the group’s call to create a single entity for external development finance. Twelve months later, member states endorsed Team Europe, an alternative approach which mobilises the resources of the EIB, the EBRD, the European Commission and national development finance institutions in support of shared development goals. This article seeks to explain why the Council ultimately preferred Team Europe’s coordinated approach to the Wieser Report’s centralised vision of a European Climate and Sustainable Development Bank. In keeping with new intergovernmentalism, we find that member states’ willingness to cooperate but reluctance to delegate, and the aim of EU institutions to protect their turf, favoured Team Europe. We see few reasons to expect radical changes in this domain despite continued doubts over the effectiveness and coherence of European development finance.

Funding

Bilateral ESRC/FNR: Banking on Europe

Economic and Social Research Council

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History

School

  • Loughborough University London

Published in

Journal of European Public Policy

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Rights holder

© The Authors

Publisher statement

This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Taylor & Francis under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Acceptance date

2023-05-30

Publication date

2023-06-08

Copyright date

2023

ISSN

1350-1763

eISSN

1466-4429

Language

  • en

Depositor

Prof Dermot Hodson. Deposit date: 30 May 2023

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