Quite a neat concept, the EIB.
For those who don’t know what the European Investment Bank is, a very brief introduction.
It is a very neat concept of essentially an investment bank like every other but with a twist. One of its objectives is to make a profit, like all investment banks. The difference is that its primary objective is supporting things that are of strategic importance to the EU.
They won’t invest in loss making projects that happen to be in the European interest, but they do select their profitable investments based on what is good for the EU and its direct partners.
That is why you see them invest in infrastructure (from asphalt to digital), energy independence (just last year they invested half a billion euros in a Scottish wind farm) and industries that are considered of strategic importance to the EU economy. That is probably how the investment in MariaDB is seen, why should practically all companies creating database technology be American? We must surely be able to do that ourselves…