The European Investment Bank (EIB) constitutes one of the main institutional pillars upon which the European Union (EU) was built. Despite this, the institution has attracted surprisingly little research. The EIB Statutes can be boiled down to three overarching objectives that its lending would prioritize – development, integration and investment – but little is known about the extent to which EIB loans fulfil each objective in practice. This article breaks new ground by providing the first comprehensive qualitative and quantitative analysis of EIB loans from its origins to the end of the Cold War. To do so, lending patterns were reconstructed drawing on extensive archival work. Results show that the EIB was the first International Financial Institution to place integration and development above the alleviation of capital constraints.