France, Germany & Italy agree to join Bank
法國(guó)德國(guó)意大利同意加入亞投行

European heavyweights, France, Germany and Italy have agreed to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the Financial Times reports.

The move follows Britain's decision to join last week.

AIIB -- which was only launched last year -- is a China-led international development bank, and it targets investment in Asian infrastructure, such as transportation, energy and telecommunications. Analysts consider the nascent institution as a rival to the Western-dominated World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. The Bank had 26 founder member countries at the earlier of this year, hailing primarily from Asia and the Middle East.

There have been question marks over its governance standards and environmental and social safeguards. But now that these European countries have joined, analysts believe these worries can be eased somewhat. Meanwhile, South Korea and Australia are also considering membership, but Japan has maintained a silence.

According to the procedure, today(Tuesday) is the last day to apply for the membership in AIIB.