Brussels, 02/12/2014 (Agence Europe) - The investment deficit is Europe's major stagnation risk compared to its international partners, said the Commissioner for Economic Affairs, Pierre Moscovici, presenting the annual growth review and the Commission's report on the macro-economic imbalance alert mechanism, on Tuesday 2 December.
“The key to the growth deficit is the investment deficit”, said Moscovici. Valdis Dombrovskis, vice-president of the Commission with responsibility for the Euro and Social Dialogue, puts this deficit in a range between €230 and €370 billion. With the “Juncker” investment plan, “we will be in the middle of this range”, he said.
In reply to Bernd Lucke (ECR, Germany), who suggested that the plan was tantamount to asking the citizens to pay for the benefits stemming from investments for businesses, Dombrovskis explained that this plan did not aim to represent hidden costs. “The idea is to have limited public investment to raise private investment”, he explained. “It is clear that the investments will have a cost”, he added, adding that the aim was for the profits to be higher than the costs.
Minimum wage. In response to the request put by a number of MEPs for a European minimum wage, Dombrovskis explained that the Commission encouraged the states to put their own in place. Marianne Thyssen, the commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs, argued that this is not a matter of EU competence.
Dombrovskis told Sergio Gutiérrez Prieto (S&D, Spain), who said that the long-term unemployment rate was another imbalance to be taken into account, that work had already started. Thyssen explained that a number of social indicators would have to be selected and thresholds set. (EL)