The European Commission should “think big” for European industry and provide it with new funding to build the EU’s strategic autonomy. The President of the European Council, Charles Michel, detailed on Monday 16 January in an opinion piece published in Politico how the EU27 should approach the European Summit of 9 and 10 February on European competitiveness and the American IRA (Inflation Reduction Act).
In many ways, his vision overlaps with that of the French government, which also circulated a note on its ‘Made in Europe’ strategy for the European Summit on 13 January.
The positions of Paris and the President of the European Council are coming closer together, notably on the extension of the SURE mechanism, created during the pandemic to finance national short-time working systems.
Sovereign wealth fund. The EU must present “in the very short term a credible and ambitious financing tool to meet urgent support and financing needs in sectors likely to be affected by (de)location or business decisions unfavourable to the robustness of the European economy”, Paris explains.
A sovereignty fund could be built in two stages: firstly, an emergency fund based on existing financing, which it would be useful to redirect in part to strategic priorities. A full sovereignty fund should be operational by the end of 2023.
The European Investment Bank would be the backbone of this sovereignty fund, which would “stimulate private investment”, suggests the President of the European Council. “Over time, the value of its accumulated assets would dwarf the debts incurred to finance the initial investments. And the fund’s assets could then be sold to private investors so that the fund can reinvest in new technological innovations or other critical areas of strategic importance”.
GBER and IPCEI - The French government believes that it is necessary to go beyond the notification threshold provided for in the revised General Block Exemption Regulation (GBER) for the implementation of the ‘Green Deal’ and to raise the notification threshold for aid for environmental protection (including decarbonisation) to €40 million per undertaking and per project.
The French government is calling for a revision of the IPCEIs, the important projects of common European interest, which should have a four-month examination period.
The introduction of targeted exemptions on IPCEI in the GBER will allow the Commission to authorise IPCEI within a much more limited timeframe, Paris writes.
Asked about the plan on his arrival at the meeting of the Eurogroup, French Finance minister Bruno Le Maire acknowledged the constraints of the IPCEI, which should not exceed “6 months” at most.
Link to the note (in French): https://aeur.eu/f/4wn (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic with Mathieu Bion)