Investment barriers in the European Union 2023

Part 1: Investment barriers identified in EIB 
operations 
Introduction 
Investment barriers in the European Union 2023: A report by the EIB Group focuses on investment 
barriers faced by projects in the sectors of forestry, commercial PPA markets, resilient roads, antimicrobial 
resistance and cross-border projects. The taxonomy of investment barriers used in this report was developed 
and published by the EIB in 2016.
 Reporting is presented at sub-sector level (for example, renewable energy), 
as project-level reporting would be unrepresentative and would render comparisons between projects difficult. 
Furthermore, the selection of EIB projects each year may not be sufficiently representative of the sectors and/or 
Member States where investment barriers are a major issue. Knowledge of many projects in a sub-sector is 
required to collect enough evidence of investment barriers. This normally requires a sample over several years 
of projects. 
Reporting on investment barriers at a sub-sector level entails several caveats: 
• The concept of investment barriers is commonly used but not well-anchored in economic theory. As indicated 
above, the sector examples are based on the taxonomy of investment barriers developed by the EIB. 
• Most investment barriers are structural and sector specific. However, some financial market failures, 
especially those involving access to finance by small and medium businesses, may also have a cyclical element 
to them. In this context, meaningful annual reporting on investment barriers can be challenging. 
• Investment barriers should not be confused with market failures. Market failures provide a public policy body 
with justification for intervention. In addition, market failures pertain to the real economy (for example, 
knowledge spillovers) or financial markets. Hence, for example, if there is no “x” for the investment barrier 
“access to finance” in the attached examples, this does not imply that the financial markets function free of 
market failures. Even if access to finance is not indicated as one of the investment barriers, there may still be 
market failures that justify public policy intervention. 
• The EIB can only report on sectors and countries where it is active and familiar with the investment 
environment. 
• The summary table, as presented in each example, is a visual tool and should be interpreted with caution. A 
“tick” in a table does not imply comparability between sectors and countries. Moreover, even within a sector 
and/or country, there are caveats that are explained in the text.

Introduction 
The forestry sector encompasses all economic activities aimed at producing goods and services from forests. 
These include activities related to silviculture, forest management, harvesting of wood from forests, extraction 
of non-wood forest products, transport, processing of wood in forest industries
 and downstream use of the 
resulting products.
 The sector also includes the production, trade and use of forest ecosystem services such as 
carbon sequestration and the financial assets derived from them.
The forestry sector plays a key role in climate change mitigation through its ability to sequester carbon in forest 
ecosystems and produce carbon-storing materials from harvested wood that can replace carbon-intensive 
products (for example, concrete, steel and plastics). The forestry sector also contributes to climate change 
adaptation, for example through protecting soil against harmful erosion and improving its water retention 
capacity. In addition, sustainable forest management
 provides a wide range of ecosystem services, such as 
habitats for flora and fauna, amenity values for recreation, and numerous non-timber forest products. 
Agroforestry systems also contribute to food security. 
The EU forestry sector (forestry and forest-based industries) generates gross added value of approximately 
€165 billion a year and employs over 3.6 million people. Moreover, this sector has significant untapped potential 
for sustainable economic growth and social development, especially in rural areas. In particular, if the world is to 
meet its targets on climate change, biodiversity and land degradation, investment in nature-based solutions must 
at least triple in real terms by 2030, and quadruple by 2050.
 For the EU, this acceleration would be equivalent

Investment barriers in the European Union 2023