Thread:User talk:CodeCat/there be and Dutch and German/reply

It's not quite the same, if I understand it correctly. is syntactically an adverb, not a subject, and the verb conjugates for whatever comes after it. So er is een uitweg (singular, "een uitweg" is the subject) but er zijn veel winkels (plural, "veel winkels" is the subject). I believe "es gibt" does not work that way, since always matches third person singular  which is therefore the subject, and the thing that exists is syntactically the direct object.