European Union governments are considering a possible plan to merge the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development with the European Investment Bank to create a development bank that would be active well beyond the bloc.

According to people familiar with the matter, a document circulated among EU finance ministers at their regular monthly meeting on Tuesday listed the merger as one of a number of options for the EBRD. The EBRD was set up in 1991 to underwrite the transition of Eastern European countries and the former Soviet republics from centrally planned to market economies.