Press Release: Inauguration of the EIB’s new building

On 2 June 2008, the European Investment Bank (EIB) inaugurated its new building on a site next to its existing headquarters on the Kirchberg plateau in Luxembourg. Both restrained and innovative, and designed entirely with environmental considerations in mind, this building substantially increases the work space of the EIB, the EU’s financing institution, enabling it to accommodate the whole of its staff on a single campus.

The opening ceremony was graced by the presence of H.R.H the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, along with the Governors of the EIB, the EU’s Finance Ministers. Speakers included Jean-Claude Juncker, Prime Minister and Finance Minister of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, and Andrej Bajuk, Slovenia’s Finance Minister and current President of the Economic and Financial Affairs Council, who together described the EIB’s ever-growing role in the process of European integration, highlighting the importance of its action to promote European projects and congratulating it on this architectural achievement.

In his address, EIB President Philippe Maystadt briefly enumerated the milestones in the institution’s history since its creation in 1958. He looked back on its establishment in the Place de Metz in Luxembourg in 1968, then the move in 1980 to its current headquarters in Kirchberg in a 'modern' and 'solidly constructed' building. Along with these still relevant criteria the President stressed the importance of 'transparency' and 'respect for the environment'. He recalled that the brief given to participants in the architects-designers competition at the launch of the new building project was to deliver a building that was unostentatious, functional, transparent and environmentally friendly, going on to say: 'Now, what could characterise the EIB better as it celebrates its 50th anniversary than the combination of solidity symbolised by the West Building and the transparency of the East Building, along with the constant attention to environmental considerations?'