By Toby McIntosh
The international body established by multilateral financial institutions to share information on their loans, including with the public, will not disclose its founding document, the “Cooperation Agreement.”
Members of the GEMs Consortium objected to the release of the governing agreement, according to the European Investment Bank, which serves as the Secretariat for the Consortium.
The EIB was responding to a request for the Cooperation Agreement by Eye on Global Transparency. EYE sought the document because it was used as justification for not releasing the minutes of the 2023 GEMs General Assembly meeting.
Taken together, the decisions effectively limit information on the GEMs Consortium and its decisions.
GEMs has come under public scrutiny in recent years because of calls from many quarters for the release of more information from its database (the Global Emerging Markets database, GEMs). The database contains information from 27 multilateral development banks and development finance institutions about their investments in emerging markets and developing economies, and is used by the members.
Critics argued that greater transparency would confirm other evidence that the risk of such investments are lower than generally seen. Since then, the GEMs Consortium has released additional data, aggregated, with some evidence of the predicted benefits. (See EYE article, Oct. 22, 2025.)
Readers: EYE sucks at social media. For reliable notification of new EYE postings please sign up for free using Subscribe in the right column. No deluge, usually several articles a month on a variety of global transparency topics.
No Transparency About Decision-Making
However, information about the GEMs Consortium’s decision-making is closely held.
Representatives of the member institutions meet twice a year, at the beginning of the year for a Working Group Annual Meeting and mid-year for a General Assembly Annual Meeting. Also, a seven-person Steering Committee “defines the strategic and operational priorities.” No meeting minutes are disclosed.
At the time of the 2023 General Assembly Annual Meeting, many voices in the private sector and non-profit world were urging more transparency about GEMs data.
On Dec. 18, 2023, EYE requested for the minutes of the General Assembly meeting, using the EIB transparency policy (EIB-TP).
The request was totally denied by the EIB on Jan. 26, 2024. EYE appealed on April 29, 2024, through the Complaints Mechanism, an internal EIB appeals body, which issued its Conclusions Report a year later, on April 25, 2025. It recommended that the EIB reconsider its reply and redact only those portions of the minutes covered by the Transparency Policy. (See EYE article, May 12, 2025.)
It took the EIB until Nov. 14, 2025, to reply. It released a one page summary of the meeting with four redactions. But refused to disclose any of the 16 pages of minutes. (See EYE article, Dec. 13, 2025.) Among other rationales, the EIB said the GEMs Steering Committee “refused consent to disclose the remainder of the document at issue.” And that the secrecy was necessitated in part by the GEMS Cooperation Agreement.
The EIB did not cite any specific language from the Cooperation Agreement, which is not to be found on the GEMS website.
So, the secrecy of the minutes was justified by a secret document.
EIB Reply Denies Access to Cooperation Agreement
EYE then requested the Cooperation Agreement, a request that wasn’t received by the EIB for “technical” reasons. (For more on the EIB’s delays in handling both the first and second request see EYE March 11, 2026 article.)
On May 12, 2026, the EIB replied, saying that members of seven-person GEMs Steering Committee had raised “objections” to releasing the minutes. And that their release would undermine the EIB’S “international relations.”
“The objections raised relate to the confidential and inter-institutional nature of the document, which governs the internal functioning of the GEMs Consortium and sets out rights and obligations of its members, who are legal entities distinct from the EIB,” the letter states.
Disclosure of the Cooperation Agreement “would breach the confidentiality framework under which the Consortium operates and would undermine the trust and cooperative arrangements between its members.”
The EIB said is “has carefully considered these positions in light of the EIB-TP.”
It said, “The EIB considers that disclosure of the Cooperation Agreement, against the expressed objections of the third parties concerned and contrary to the governance rules of the Consortium, could violate the Cooperation Agreement and undermine the relationship of trust established between the EIB and the members of the Consortium, as well as between their respective Member States and Partner Countries.”
Disclosure of the Cooperation Agreement, “even in part, would undermine the protection of the public interest as regards international relations, within the meaning of Article 5.4 a), third bullet point, of the EIB-TP and the EIB is prohibited from disclosing the document.”
The provision says the EIB can refuse access “where disclosure would undermine the protection of a. the public interest” including “international relations.”
“As a member of the Consortium, the EIB operates within a governance framework based on jointly agreed rules and decisions,” the EIB wrote. “Disclosure of the Cooperation Agreement outside that framework would be perceived as a violation of the Cooperation Agreement which would undermine the trust‑based relationships underpinning the functioning of the Consortium and, accordingly, the protection of the public interest as regards international relations.”
Text of the EIB reply
Dear Mr McIntosh,
We refer to your request for access to the Global Emerging Markets (GEMs) Cooperation Agreement (the “document at issue”), registered by the European Investment Bank (EIB) on 19 March 2026, and to our subsequent correspondence.
The EIB has assessed your request in accordance with the EIB Group Transparency Policy (EIB‑TP). Pursuant to Article 5.11 of the EIB‑TP and the provisions of the GEMs Cooperation Agreement, the EIB consulted the GEMs Steering Committee regarding the possible disclosure of the document at issue.
Following this consultation, objections were raised, within the GEMs governance framework, to the disclosure of the Cooperation Agreement. The objections raised relate to the confidential and inter-institutional nature of the document, which governs the internal functioning of the GEMs Consortium and sets out rights and obligations of its members, who are legal entities distinct from the EIB. Accordingly, the disclosure of the Cooperation Agreement to third parties would breach the confidentiality framework under which the Consortium operates and would undermine the trust and cooperative arrangements between its members.
The EIB has carefully considered these positions in light of the EIB-TP. The EIB considers that disclosure of the Cooperation Agreement, against the expressed objections of the third parties concerned and contrary to the governance rules of the Consortium, could violate the Cooperation Agreement and undermine the relationship of trust established between the EIB and the members of the Consortium, as well as between their respective Member States and Partner Countries. Accordingly, disclosure of the Cooperation Agreement, even in part, would undermine the protection of the public interest as regards international relations, within the meaning of Article 5.4 a), third bullet point, of the EIB-TP and the EIB is prohibited from disclosing the document.
As already communicated to you in the context of a previous access‑to‑documents request relating to GEMs documents, the GEMs Consortium is a collaborative initiative involving multiple Multilateral Development Banks and Development Finance Institutions. As a member of the Consortium, the EIB operates within a governance framework based on jointly agreed rules and decisions. Disclosure of the Cooperation Agreement outside that framework would be perceived as a violation of the Cooperation Agreement which would undermine the trust‑based relationships underpinning the functioning of the Consortium and, accordingly, the protection of the public interest as regards international relations.
For these reasons, the EIB is unable to grant access, in full or in part, to the GEMs Cooperation Agreement[1].
Yours sincerely,
EIB Transparency and Civil Society Team
General Secretariat
European Investment Bank
