Does the EBRD still finance freedom?

Source:Financial Times Date:30Jan2022

The EBRD, whose total new investments in 2021 topped €10bn, is unique among multilateral development banks in placing a drive towards multi-party democracy at the heart of its mandate. That critical principle — an inheritance from its 1990s origins operating in post-communist eastern Europe — is however under mounting strain. The London-based lender is operating against a backdrop of anti-democratic backsliding and authoritarianism in a host of its client countries, including Turkey, Egypt, Belarus and Kazakhstan, where the regime in recent weeks has brutally suppressed widespread protests over poverty and corruption.