Annual Report
2015

About the EBRD

The EBRD is owned by 65 countries, the European Union and the European Investment Bank.

The Bank is investing in changing people’s lives from central Europe to Central Asia, the Western Balkans and the southern and eastern Mediterranean region.

With an emphasis on working with the private sector, we invest in projects, engage in policy dialogue and provide technical advice that fosters innovation and builds sustainable and open-market economies.

The EBRD is committed to promoting sustainable development. We seek to ensure that our projects are socially and environmentally sustainable, respect the rights of affected communities, and are designed and operated in compliance with applicable regulatory requirements and international good practices.

Our reputation and future of the EBRD depend on the Bank’s integrity: we promote good corporate governance and high ethical standards in all our business. We also have a strong commitment to environmental and social sustainability. EBRD staff are key to our success and we employ a highly skilled and diverse workforce with exceptional leadership abilities from across our region, and beyond.

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Organisational chart (187 KB)

Financing change

We provide direct financing for well-structured, financially robust projects of all sizes (including many small businesses), both directly and through financial intermediaries such as local banks and investment funds.

The EBRD works mainly with private sector clients, but also finances municipal entities and publicly owned companies. Our principal financing instruments are loans, equity investments and guarantees.

We maintain close policy dialogue with governments, authorities, international financial institutions, and representatives of civil society, and provide targeted technical assistance using funds donated by member governments and institutions.

President's message

2016 is a special year for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. It marks a quarter-century of helping our countries of operations make the transition to more market-based, sustainable economies.

The anniversary follows a year of record investment levels and impact in EBRD recipient countries. In 2015, we invested €9.4 billion in over 380 projects. It was also the year in which our goal of re-energising transition started to bear fruit. 2015 saw the best reform performance in our region for a long time, which was confirmed by improvements in a number of our transition reform indicators, especially in the infrastructure sector.

Our operational efforts and increased focus on policy reform dialogue were achieved despite serious economic, geopolitical and security challenges in our region. For the second year running, following guidance from our shareholders, we were unable to undertake new projects in Russia. The achievements of 2015 therefore underlined that the EBRD is an adaptable, innovative and strong bank. Our work in our countries of operations was recognised by others, and we were particularly pleased to receive the ‘Global Multilateral of the Year’ award from Project Finance International, part of Thomson Reuters.

Throughout the past 25 years, the Bank has been continuously evolving, both geographically and operationally. It has always sought new ways to create impact on the ground and ensure that it stays relevant to the needs of countries, citizens and clients.

The dynamic nature of the EBRD is captured by our roadmap for the next five years, the Strategic and Capital Framework, which was agreed by our Governors in May 2015. It aims to increase our impact by focusing on three themes: we will build the economic resilience of our countries by improving their competitiveness and making them more stable, inclusive and better-governed; we will improve their integration into the regional and global economies; and we will help them to fight global challenges such as climate change by making their economies more sustainable.

In 2016, we have started implementing this fresh strategic effort through various tools, including a new Green Economy Transition approach, which seeks to boost the amount of investment in sustainable and environmental projects to 40 per cent of the EBRD’s total annual financing by 2020, and our first Strategy for the Promotion of Gender Equality. In line with the Strategy, projects will be assessed for their potential to promote equal opportunities. Increasingly, investment and the policy expertise that can accelerate reform will go hand in hand.

The Bank’s robust performance, and the sharpened focus of our activities, would not have been possible without the modernisation efforts that we have pursued internally over the past four years. They have made us more agile, innovative and responsive. As the world becomes more challenging, the EBRD has grown nimbler to cope and deepen our impact. The next stage of that work is under way, focusing on making the institution more efficient and effective internally, in order to fulfil our goals externally.

The EBRD has never been complacent and has always remained innovative – understanding that the key to future success lies in continuously examining whether there are ways to deliver better outcomes. We can celebrate our 25th anniversary confident in our skills and ability to adapt, aware of the strong global economic headwinds and determined to meet our strategic objectives.

Read the pdf of the Annual Report 2015
Annual Report 2015 (3.2mb)

Donors and civil society

Donors are active throughout the EBRD region and play a major part in the transition process by providing a range of funding that helps prepare the way for Bank projects, foster reform and improve the investment climate. Donors are particularly active in those parts of the EBRD region that face the biggest obstacles to recovery and growth and in the infrastructure, sustainable energy and small business sectors. In 2015, they contributed €359 million in new grant financing.

The EBRD also maintains policy dialogue with governments, authorities, international financial institutions, and representatives of civil society.

We engage in open communication with a variety of civil society organisations, both international and those from the countries where we invest. Civil society provides local knowledge, technical expertise and innovative ideas, all of which contribute to the development of our policies, strategies and the implementation of projects. In this way, civil society enhances our effectiveness and impact across the region.

Fostering growth

Through our strategic initiatives, we mobilise resources from across the organisation to address specific transition challenges in a targeted and highly effective manner.

Engagement in the areas of resource efficiency and resilience to climate change, the development of a healthy SME sector, stronger financial intermediation and transition in the less-advanced economies of our region was tracked in the EBRD’s corporate scorecard in 2015. From 2016, this will also monitor the promotion of gender equality.

In addition, the EBRD fosters inclusive growth, the emergence of a knowledge economy and legal reform.

We maintain close policy dialogue with governments, authorities, international financial institutions, and representatives of civil society. This policy dialogue helps create impact and makes a difference to both investors and communities in the countries where we invest.

Our related policy initiatives blend investments with policy dialogue and targeted technical assistance to address common global and regional challenges, increase economic resilience, and promote recovery and growth across our region.