4. What use has the Welsh Government made of the European Investment Bank loans? OAQ(5)0004(FLG)

Thank you very much, Eluned Morgan. Wales has enjoyed a positive relationship with the European Investment Bank throughout the devolution era, with nearly £2 billion invested in both public and private projects, including water, aviation, the motor industry and housing.

Thank you, Ysgrifennydd, for that. There are other projects, of course, that have been funded with European Investment Bank funding, including the Swansea campus, the A55 and, crucially, projects that are in the pipeline like the south Wales metro. Now, the European Union treaty is clear that members of the European Investment Bank must be members of the European Union. Nevertheless, the European Investment Bank has invested in four countries of the European free trade area, and I just wondered whether the Ysgrifennydd wouldn’t be able to put pressure, during the negotiations, to ensure that we will still be able to participate in European Investment Bank funding.

Can I thank Eluned Morgan for a very important supplementary question there? She’s quite right that the European Investment Bank is wholly owned by its shareholders and all its shareholders are the 28 European Union member states. The United Kingdom has a 16 per cent shareholding in the EIB and is, therefore, one of the four main shareholders in the bank. And in leaving the European Union, we will have to leave that direct membership of the EIB as well.

Now, Eluned Morgan is right to say that the EIB is able to lend to countries outside the European Union, but EIB lending outside the EU is governed by a series of EU mandates in support of development and co-operation policies in partner countries. In other words, every time it has a relationship with another country, that has to be specifically mandated by those countries that are the shareholding members of the EIB. So, we will have to put pressure on to negotiate exactly that sort of relationship in order to allow us in Wales to go on benefitting from the funds that the EIB has provided in the past, and are pivotal to some of the plans that we have for the future.

The likelihood, under the proposed timetable for Brexit, is that institutions in Wales—the Swansea campus being one of them—will still have loans from the European Investment Bank as we withdraw from Europe. Have you had discussions, therefore, with the Treasury and the EIB as to how the current loans are going to be managed? Will those loans have to be shifted to another bank, perhaps on less favourable terms, or will it be possible for the loans owing today to be carried forward until that is paid off?

The supplementary to that, if I may: are you considering, as Adam Price suggested, as a Welsh Government response to this decision, that we need an investment bank for Wales in any case?

In answering Simon Thomas’s first supplementary question, I’ve not yet had direct discussions on the very important issue that he raises of Wales-based services that are already in a relationship with the EIB that will need to extend well beyond any exit from the European Union. Now, the EIB itself has said that it’s unable to provide any certainty on a whole range of issues in relation to relationships it has right across the United Kingdom without clarity, as it says, on the timing circumstances and conditions of a withdrawal settlement. But the successor arrangements to arrangements that are already in place with the EIB post a Brexit will be an important part of that discussion.

Alternative arrangements that might be possible either for Wales alone or on a co-operative basis with other UK nations were rehearsed here in the Chamber yesterday, and the First Minister, I know, responded positively to the suggestion that we ought to pursue that with our other UK partners.