Brussels, 24/06/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 24 June, the European Parliament approved the inter-institutional political agreement on the draft regulation setting in place the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), the financial arm of the Juncker investment plan (see EUROPE 11323).
The co-rapporteur of the EP, José Manuel Fernandes (EPP, Portugal), welcomed the coming into being this summer of the EFSI, which will promote “stronger economic recovery” in the European Union. The legislative text does not provide for any thematic or geographical distribution of the projects to be supported under the Juncker plan, he stressed, laying emphasis on the guarantees provided precisely to avoid any politicisation of the project selection process. Referring to the major investment deficit the EU has faced since the financial crisis of 2008, Udo Bullmann (S&D, Germany), the other co-rapporteur of the EP, nonetheless pointed out that the regulation contained “investment criteria” aiming to mobilise the available resources to the more future-proof sectors of activity. It is worth noting that the EP has also secured a right of scrutiny over the investment guidelines to be included in the appendix to the future regulation.
Speaking on behalf of the European Commission, the Commissioner for Investment, Jyrki Katainen, said that the EFSI would help to fight “market shortcomings”. “Europe is not short of cash, but there are reasons why this cash is not being mobilised enough for productive investments”, he said. He went on to argue that the fund “will not change the world”, hence the importance for the member states of continuing with their structural reforms and for the Commission of focusing on the “third pillar of the Juncker plan”, namely the development of the single market. He reiterated that the public contributions to the Juncker plan from the member states would be neutral with regard to the Stability and Growth Pact. He concluded by saying that by “September”, the procedure to recruit the future managers of the fund, which will call for hearings at the EP, will be well underway.
The EFSI, which has been set up under the aegis of the EIB, aims to draw down €315 billion in additional investments in Europe over three years. It will stand guarantor for the first losses stemming from the projects selected by the EIB on their own merit in the framework of the Juncker plan. To do so, it will have a public financial guarantee of €21 billion, €16 billion from the EU budget and €5 billion from the EIB. In fact, an envelope of €8 billion will be made available from the EU budget (€5 billion from Community programmes such as Horizon 2020 and the Connecting Europe Facility, and €3 billion from the budgetary margins for 2014 and 2015). Fernandes pledged that the European Parliament would fight every year to ensure that the impact on the Community programmes in question would be kept to an absolute minimum.
None of the member states will be making a direct contribution to the funding of the EFSI. However, seven countries have already announced that they will be making a voluntary contribution to the Juncker plan via their national investment banks: Germany (€8 billion), France (€8 billion), Italy (€8 billion), Poland (€8 billion), Spain (€1.5 billion), Slovakia (€400 million) and Luxembourg (€80 million).
In the framework of the Juncker plan, the member states will be invited to set up decentralised investment platforms to advise the project holders in their procedures and to put them in touch with investors.
Additionally, the budgets committee of the European Parliament on Tuesday 23 June gave its support to draft amending budget number 1 to the 2015 budget, which provides for €1.36 billion in commitment appropriations and €10 million in payment appropriations to be transferred to a budgetary line to feed into the guarantee fund of the Juncker plan (on 7 July, the plenary will vote on this amending budget). (Mathieu Bion with Lionel Changeur)