depending on the geographical location of each member, voting rights differ. More precisely, European and other creditor members hold a majority voting power. At its beginning, the EBRD was owned by more than 40 members, in 2015 the number of countries owning it was 61. and as of March 2022, there were 71 countries as owners. The following presidents have served the EBRD to date (as of March 2022). Jacques Attali: April 1991 – June 1993 Jacques de Larosière: September 1993 – January 1998 Horst Köhler: September 1998 – April 2000 Jean Lemierre: July 2000 – July 2008 Thomas Mirow: July 2008 – July 2012 Suma Chakrabarti: July 2012 – July 2020 : 2020 – present Membership To become a member of the bank, a country needs to fit the EBRD's Articles of Agreement. These Articles stipulate that a country can only become a Member State if it is a state in Europe or a non-European member of the IMF. Institutions like the European Union and the EIB also participate in the bank operations. Since its fondation the EBRD has almost doubled in membership size. The latest accessions to the bank are countries located in Africa. Shareholders Public banking The EBRD is a public bank, meaning that public institutions such as states are shareholders in those institutions. More precisely, public financial institutions are controlled major predominantly by public authorities (more than 50%) whereas in institutions with public participations, public authorities aren’t majority shareholders. Public banks were particularly involved in the economic transition of the former Soviet Republics and Central and Eastern European countries as private banks and other sources of financing didn’t want to invest for reasons such as those countries’ macroeconomic difficulties as well as political reasons regarding the country’s stability for instance. Relationship with the EIB In the context of the EU’s investment banking, the EBRD and the EIB have been involved in a rivalry regarding the status of the “EU’s premier development bank”. Major criticism about the EBRD in this situation is related to the fact that non-EU countries are also important shareholders whereas the EIB is completely owned by the EU. More recently, another source of rivalry was about becoming the new “European Climate and Sustainable Development Bank (ECSDB). Public Banks and the Covid-19 pandemic More recently, since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, public banks have had their influence and role increased as they have