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The Council of Europe Development Bank (CEB) will host their annual meeting on 8 and 9 July in Dublin. This is the first time Ireland will host the Annual Meeting of an International Financial Institution. The event is one of the key events of Ireland’s six-month Presidency of the Committee of Minister of the Council of Europe, where Minister for Foreign Affairs, Simon Coveney, is the Chair of the Committee of Ministers for the duration of the Presidency:
“I am delighted to welcome the Council of Europe Development Bank Governor and his colleagues to Dublin for their 2022 Annual Meeting this week. I have committed, on behalf of the government, €1 million to a specially established donor fund in the Bank which will be used specifically for those displaced by the war in Ukraine, and when the time is right, we will support the reconstruction of vital infrastructure in Ukraine”, said Minister Donohoe, following his meeting with Governor Monticelli."
The CEB was the first Multilateral Development Bank to disburse grants providing immediate assistance to people fleeing Ukraine. Earlier this year, it approved a total of €5.1 million in grants from the Migrant and Refugee Fund to CEB member countries experiencing very large inflows of people from Ukraine, including to International Organization for Migration offices in Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, the Republic of Moldova, Romania and the Slovak Republic.
On 9 June, the Bank issued a new USD 1 billion three-year global Social Inclusion Bond (SIB) whose proceeds will be primarily used to support Ukrainian refugees hosted by CEB member countries.
Minister Donohoe has committed €1 million to a specially established, Irish-initiated, “Fund for Ukraine”. This special fund would be used in Ukraine to support the millions of Ukrainians displaced as a result of this war. In time, it will be used for the future rebuilding of critical infrastructure destroyed by the Russian invasion, such as schools and health facilities. Officials in the Department of Finance will continue working with the Bank to establish a pipeline of projects for Ukraine.
Based in Paris, the Council of Europe Development Bank (CEB) is a multilateral development bank with an exclusively social mandate. The CEB was set up in 1956 following the Hungarian Uprising in that year to provide solutions to the problems experienced by refugees at that time. Since then, it has adapted to changes in social priorities in Europe.
The CEB shareholders consist of forty-two Council of Europe Member States with twenty-two Central, Eastern and South Eastern European countries forming the Bank's target countries. There are forty-seven members in the wider Council of Europe (based in Strasbourg). This included Russia until it was excluded from membership on 16 March when it invaded Ukraine. Belarus had an observer status at the Council, which has also been withdrawn.
The CEB grants loans directly to its Member States in addition to financial institutions and local authorities in these States for the financing of projects in the social sector, in accordance with its Articles of Agreement of the Bank.
Apart from the European Investment Bank (EIB), the CEB is the only other Multilateral Development Bank that provides financing to Ireland. Funding has been provided to Local Authorities and financial intermediaries such as the Housing Finance Agency (HFA) and Social Finance Foundation (SFF).