European Investment Bank · Southern Neighbourhood & MENA
106 projects reaching the region since January 2020 — from Morocco to Jordan. Three patterns stand out: one country dominates, the leading instrument isn't infrastructure, and the pipeline broke after 2023.
Egypt alone takes €8.1 bn — almost as much as Morocco and Jordan combined — from just 24 projects.
The EU's Directorate-General for the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf oversees 19 partner countries. Only 7 have EIB projects since 2020; the 12 Gulf and conflict-affected states have none.
Country scope from the European Commission's official map Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf (© European Union, 2025). Source. Counts are direct country tags; regional operations ("Mediterranean Countries") are not attributed to a single state here.
Lending through local banks is the most common instrument by far. Transport moves less often but in far bigger tickets. Bars show each sector's share of the maximum.
A steady ~19 projects a year through 2023, then a sharp drop from 2024 — coinciding with the October 2023 regional escalation.
Credit lines excluded, so this is direct project finance only. Transport and water dominate the top of the list — and Egypt takes 4 of the 6 biggest tickets. Each bar is one project, coloured by country.
Pick a country to list all its projects with every published data point. The total sums the proposed EIB finance across projects that publish a figure.
Source: EIB public project database (eib.org), status dates 03/01/2020–16/07/2026, retrieved July 2026. "Signed" here folds in partially/fully disbursed and reimbursed projects. 2026 is year-to-date and shown hatched. Country totals slightly undercount: 9 projects publish no € figure. Multi-country projects count toward each region they touch.