Between 2005 and 2010 the EIB - the EU's bank, which is supposed to follow EU policy - financed 85 PPP projects (pdf) with a total of EUR 15.2 billion, mostly in the transport sector but also with a significant number of projects in the health and education sectors. Most of these projects were in the UK, Spain and Portugal, with very few in central and eastern Europe.

The EBRD has an explicit mandate to encourage economic and political transition in the former Soviet Union countries and the Eastern Bloc satellites through the development of market economies. Since the beginning of operations in 1991, the EBRD has been involved in creating the legal environment for private investment in its countries of operation, including concession laws.

The involvement of public banks in public-private partnerships has not proved to ensure that the public sector obtains good value for money from PPPs.

The official reasons why PPPs are used are because they enable projects to be realised now which otherwise would not be affordable, and because they take advantage of the supposedly greater efficiency of the private sector in public service delivery. However the main reason they have seemed attractive to decision-makers is because they can sometimes move projects off the government balance sheet, thus enabling governments to “build now, pay later”.

Public-private partnerships involve commercial contracts between public authorities (state or local) and private businesses in the design, construction, financing and operation of public infrastructure and services that have traditionally been delivered by the public sector, such as motorways, hospitals or schools.

One of the least examined aspects of PPP motorway projects is how the PPP model influences the resolution of environmental conflicts. In theory, it should not influence it at all.

The issue of refinancing gains has been among the most scandalous aspects of public-private partnerships.

Water PPPs, unlike most others, are more about renovating and managing existing facilities than about building a visible new piece of infrastructure, although the contracts may also contain requirements for the water network to be extended in countries where some households are not connected to the water network.