OREANDA-NEWS. The Director-General of the International Labour Organization (ILO), Guy Ryder and the Vice-President of the European Investment Bank (EIB), Roman Escolano have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to reinforce and expand cooperation between the two organizations in the field of employment and social affairs.

Under the initiative, global experience gained by the ILO will be shared with the world’s largest international public bank, while sector specific challenges experienced by the EIB will be used for research by the United Nations (UN) specialized agency.

The new agreement reflects the shared focus of the ILO and EIB on supporting economic growth and job creation, fostering skills and improving competitiveness. The two organizations will intensify the exchange of information and shared experience on a range of issues, including how to increase effective engagement to address youth unemployment. Increased technical cooperation under the initiative will allow the EIB to improve assessment of employment benefits and economic impact of lending activity.

“All lending by the European Investment Bank seeks to create high-quality jobs and make a sustainable contribution to the local and wider economy,” said Mr. Escolano. “I am confident that this new cooperation with the ILO will allow us to better evaluate the impact on job creation from all the projects we finance, to better assess how schemes support youth employment and to ensure that we are more effective in supporting sustainable growth in the years to come, ” he added.

“This agreement represents a significant step forward in strengthening cooperation and formalizing relations between the two organizations and will form the basis for a strategic partnership with the mutual objective of creating more and better quality employment,” said Mr.Ryder.

Improved technical understanding of economic competitiveness and effective support for job creation will strengthen lending activity by the EIB in North Africa and the Eastern Partnership countries, including under the recently launched € 315 billion Investment Plan for Europe.

The future cooperation will also build on current EIB-ILO research examining the employment impact of EIB-backed projects in the Mediterranean, to include other regions in Central and Eastern Europe, and Central Asia.