On Thursday 18 April, the European Parliament set in stone the Interinstitutional Agreement on the InvestEU programme to extend the Juncker investment plan (see EUROPE 12218/14) beyond 2020.
The future InvestEU Fund will provide a public guarantee based on the European Union budget to attract private investment to finance risky investment projects.
MEPs want to increase this guarantee from €38 billion to €40.8 billion in order to be able to attract nearly €700 billion in private investment between 2021 and 2027. But the final budgetary allocation of the programme will be determined in the context of the negotiations on the post-2020 multiannual financial framework.
Parliament and the EU Council agreed on clearer financing objectives: employment, the implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement, economic, territorial and social cohesion. At least 55% of the investments made in the strategic objective (‘window’) dedicated to sustainable infrastructure must be compatible with the Paris Climate Agreement.
The determination of a shared governance of the InvestEU Fund has also been the subject of a bitter battle between the European Commission, which manages 14 existing financial instruments to be grouped together in the future programme, and the EIB, which manages the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), the financial arm of the current Juncker plan, and determines the projects currently supported.
See the legislative text: http://bit.ly/2IAQh18. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)