ABSTRACT
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has to be distinguished from the European Investment Bank (EIB), originally set up under the Treaty of Rome to promote capital investment within the Community. Its main function is economic; most of its operations are commercial; and its staffs looks like fairly conventional international bankers. The pressure to move eastwards is probably the area where the EBRD is most directly involved in security issues. From the beginning, the EBRD was mandated to "foster the transition towards open market-orientated economies and to promote private and entrepreneurial initiative". In its economic and political roles, the EBRD was fashioned to go beyond the EIB. It also acquired an extra- European Union character. The EBRD was instructed to work "in consultation with" the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. This has had the perhaps intended effect of turning it into the micro-economic handmaiden of the IMF's macro-economic drill-master.
