The European Investment Bank and the 'Mezzogiorno' in the context of regional development (1958-1973)

The aim of this paper is to retrace the ways the European Investment Bank operated in Italy since its creation in 1958 to 1973. During these fifteen years, the Bank was strictly configured as an institution oriented to the recovering of regional imbalances and, consequently, the major part of its operations has been taken forward in Italy. After have considered the main phases by means of, during the first years, the EIB accomplished the goal of building its own accountability at the EEC and international levels, the analysis focuses on the Bank’s activity in the Mezzogiorno. This means that the paper examines the EIB’s relations with the Italian authorities and, namely, with the agencies of the ‘extraordinary intervention’, such as the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno and the regional credit institutes (Isveimer, Irfis and Cis), in order to understand the Bank’s basic choices and conditionality in the context of the Italian economy, as well as the theoretical paradigms of intervention and its role in the scope of the nascent Community regional policy. During the 60s the EIB fully participated in the effort of reducing the gap between the Mezzogiorno and the Northern regions, contributing to the building of the Southern heavy and basic industry and trying to support public and private capital investments in the iron and steel, chemical and engineering sector.