Brussels, 11/12/2014 (Agence Europe) - At the Summit of 18 and 19 December, the European Council will give its approval to the investment plan of the European Commission (EUROPE 11205).
The Twenty-Eight will call for a “European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI) to be set up to mobilise new investments in strategic areas between 2015 and 2017, which will complement ongoing EU programmes and traditional EIB activities”, according to draft conclusions dated Monday 8 December (available via Twitter @AgencEurope). They encourage “member states, national promotional banks and private investors” to contribute to it.
The question of direct contributions to the future EFSI is a matter for debate. At the Ecofin Council, the Commissioner for Growth, Jyrki Katainen, who is leading the work within the European Commission, acknowledged that so far, none of the member states have made any concrete promises, stressing that the Juncker plan was designed to produce results even without national public contributions (EUROPE 11214). In order to encourage the feed-in of capital, the Commission has proposed that the direct contributions of the states to the EFSI be considered neutral from the point of view of the Stability and Growth Pact, in other words that they will be taken into account, but will not trigger further stages in the assessment of compliance with the national budgetary commitments. This neutralisation is already in use for the accounting treatment of the contributions of the eurozone countries to the capital of the European Stability Mechanism. The Social Democrat family is bringing pressure to bear to ensure that this is the case (see other article and EUROPE 11215).
At this stage, the Summit's draft conclusions make no reference to this budgetary matter.
In order to be able to mobilise new investments “in mid-2015”, the Commission will present a legislative proposal “in early January 2015”, for adoption “by June”. By then, the EIB will have been called upon to start new activities “from January 2015”, which “take account” of the list of 2,000 projects submitted indicatively by the Commission/EIB 'task force'.
The Summit will lay emphasis on the barriers to be removed to boost investment. It will stress the importance of completing the single market in strategic sectors such as energy (proposal anticipated by “March 2015”) and digital (proposal expected “before the Summit of June 2015”). (MB)