Civil Society Calls for More Independence and A Stronger Remedy Mandate for European Investment Bank’s Complaints Mechanism

The European Investment Bank (EIB) is the financial arm of the European Union and the largest multilateral development bank. Investing in both public and private entities through debt, equity and guarantees, it has mobilised over a trillion euros in its 68 years of existence.

To support the EU’s Global Gateway strategy, the EIB now commits around 10% of its annual investment volume to investments outside of the EU. These investments, many in large-scale projects with major physical footprints, can cause significant harm to local communities and the environment. In particular, following a decade-long moratorium on EU’s direct financing of mining projects, the EIB resumed and quickly ramped up its investments in transition mineral extraction and processing in 2024 despite civil society outcry. 

In the midst of these developments, it was high time to review and rewrite the policy of EIB’s Complaints Mechanism (the “EIB-CM”), which provides communities harmed by EIB-supported projects a grievance channel to seek redress. While the draft EIB-CM policy improves the mechanism’s commitment to facilitating remedy and ensuring the fairness of the process, there are still significant gaps to be addressed to ensure that communities harmed by EIB investments are made whole. 

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The EIB-CM’s public consultation on a new draft policy

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In March 2026, the EIB-CM launched its long-awaited public consultation of a draft amended policy, allowing external stakeholders to participate in in-person and virtual consultation workshops and provide written submissions. 

Accountability Counsel provided written comments in May 2026 in collaboration with CSO partners CEE Bankwatch Network, CONCORD Europe, Counter Balance, Inclusive Development International, Recourse and Urgewald (and endorsed by a further thirteen organisations).

We applaud the EIB-CM’s transparent and consultative approach to the policy review process as well as the significant improvements in the new draft policy, which reflect many previous recommendations shared by our organisations as well as the External Review Report by three independent external experts procured by the EIB. In particular, the EIB-CM now has an explicit mandate to facilitate remedy, including through making sure remedial action plans are written in consultation with complainants and monitored regularly until all actions are implemented.  

Despite these encouraging improvements, the draft policy must go further to improve the EIB-CM’s independence, accessibility and effectiveness in helping the EIB Group respond to and provide remedy for harm. We urge the EIB-CM to follow international good practice amongst peer Independent Accountability Mechanisms (“IAMs”) to truly ensure the EIB safeguards human rights and preserves the environment in the pursuit of sustainable investment.

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Concerns about the independence of the EIB-CM remain

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Civil society has long criticised the EIB-CM for its lack of independence. An IAM is meant to either investigate alleged noncompliance with institutional policies by the institution’s management or facilitate dialogues between communities and project companies who received the investments as a neutral party. Project-affected communities and CSOs are less likely to use the mechanism if they perceive that it is beholden to or unduly influenced by management. 

The EIB-CM is supervised on a day-to-day basis by the Management Committee, consisting of the EIB Group President and 8 Vice Presidents. The EIB Board of Directors, on the other hand, only receives periodic high-level reporting and has limited scope to ensure the EIB-CM’s ability to investigate non-compliance and monitor remedial actions without overt or covert pressure from bank management. There are also little safeguards with respect to the hiring and subsequent employment of EIB-CM leadership and staff to guarantee its impartiality.

We therefore recommend that the EIB-CM requires its Head to have a mandatory cooling-off period between serving within the EIB Group and serving on the EIB-CM and to not seek employment within the EIB Group for at least 5 years afterwards. We also urge the Head of the EIB-CM to be allowed full autonomy over resource and budget allocation and full responsibility and authority to interpret and implement the policy without needing authorisation by the Inspector General.

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A strong remedy mandate requires further improvements to compliance review, dispute resolution and early resolution processes

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We are greatly encouraged by the EIB-CM’s explicit mandate to facilitate access to remedy. We further commend the various ways the EIB-CM is now able to facilitate effective remedy in compliance review (CR) and Dispute Resolution (DR) processes by recommending ways to remedy non-compliance and monitoring the implementation of these remedial actions until they are fully implemented.

However,  the complainants, the EIB-CM and the Board must each be afforded a more active role in the design and implementation of remedial actions following a CR. Complainants should be consulted during the drafting of remedial action plans, not merely after these plans have been agreed with the Client. The Board, and not just the management-led Management Committee, must receive regular and substantial information updates about the implementation of remedial actions to be able to supervise the EIB-CM’s efforts to develop and implement stronger, more remedy-focused remedial action plans and, if needed, intervene in the case of disagreements between EIB-CM and EIB management that warrant escalation to the Board. Finally, the EIB-CM itself must be equipped with adequate resources and information to robustly monitor the implementation of remedial actions, conduct site visits as needed and be able to escalate concerns regarding significant delays in delivering remedy to the Board.

There is now much greater clarity around the DR process, which is put on a more equal footing with CR in the new draft policy. However, DR should be designed to deliver remedy for complainants first and foremost, and the EIB-CM should monitor DR agreements at as regular intervals as CR processes. If any agreed remedies aren’t implemented, they should be transferred to CR with the parties’ consent.

We are also concerned about the newly proposed Early Resolution process, the purported purpose of which is to give communities opportunities to directly address issues with EIB management.  While we commend the inclusion of certain guardrails to ensure the complainants consent to a timebound transfer to this procedure, we are concerned that, without explicit policy safeguards, this tool could become a substitute for DR processes in practice and block access to the normal EIB-CM processes. We recommend allowing complainants full choice to revert back to either a CR or DR process without any default presumption or preference for CR as envisioned by the current policy. All Early Resolution cases should be included in the complaint registry with the same level of information disclosure applied.

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Structural barriers persist 

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There remain certain structural barriers which prevent all communities harmed by EIB investments from accessing the EIB-CM for remedy.

Notably, while the new draft policy was subject to public consultation, the EIB-CM has not committed to consult on nor publish the procedures which are being separately drafted. It is crucial that all substantive policies and related operationalising provisions are consulted on and publicly disclosed in the interest of public accountability and trust-building. We therefore strongly urge the EIB to follow good practice amongst peer IAMs and follow suit.

Finally, the EIB-CM cannot implement its policy, however robust, if it does not have adequate resources and budget. An accountability mechanism’s budget should not be dependent on the financial institution’s management whose action it reviews, but should rather be approved by the Board under a separate budget line. Otherwise, the institution may have undue influence over its ability to process complaints. We further urge the policy to codify the EIB-CM’s ability to call on additional funds from the Board if necessary, if the number and complexity of complaints exceed expectations. 

The EIB still has an opportunity to incorporate civil society and external stakeholder feedback into its final draft policy, which is due to be presented to the Bank’s Board of Directors in July for approval. We hope the final policy further strengthens the EIB-CM’s accessibility, independence and legitimacy, and reflects the EIB Group’s commitment to sustainability and accountability.