The European External Investment Plan: how to make it work

The EU’s External Investment Plan (EIP), aimed at boosting investment in Africa and the EU neighbourhood, is now fully operational. While it was mostly created to contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the EIP was also developed to tackle the ’root causes’ of the growing migration flows to the EU.

Despite its innovative design and great potential, the plan has a few flaws. First, there is a discrepancy between the short-term goal of limiting migration and the much longer timeframe required to promote sustainable development. At the same time, an incremental increase in prosperity in countries facing extreme poverty could even enable more people to undertake the precarious journey to Europe. And migration itself has proven to be an important factor of development and financial income for countries of origin. Second, the use of blended finance has come under increasing scrutiny, especially when it comes to reconciling the interests of the business sector with those of the wider public. Additional complicating factors are the lack of reform, the close links between politics and business, widespread corruption and cronyism, and the apparent lack of accountability of the political actors in the region.

To make the EIP work for everyone, the EU should:

• Realise that the EIP is not a silver bullet, and that it should be part of a wider, coordinated effort to foster prosperity and stability in its neighbourhood. It should also be aligned with other instruments from the EU’s development arsenal, including the European Investment Bank’s resilience initiative and its Neighbourhood Policy.

• Connect the EIP with a broader reform agenda that tackles corruption and cronyism, and addresses rule of law, governance, and social and environmental accountability issues in the region. That way, society as a whole will profit from the plan, and not just the business sector. Working together with non-state actors, such as civil society organisations, will also be vital in that respect.

• Put its full political and diplomatic weight behind the plan to ensure coordination, accountability, efficiency, and the fruitful cooperation of all actors involved.