The European Commission is considering how to extend the InvestEU programme as part of the initiative to simplify the rules that it will be proposing in February.
As we noted last October (see EUROPE 13494/17), “the big challenge” of the InvestEU programme is that “demand exceeds by large the available resources”, said Elena Flores, Chair of the programme’s Steering Board, on Monday 3 February in front of the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs.
At the end of 2024, two years before the end of InvestEU, the public guarantee from the EU budget, which enables additional private investment to be mobilised, had already been mobilised to the tune of €22.5 billion, out of a total available of €26 billion.
Ms Flores reported on discussions with the EIB, which is responsible for managing the bulk of the public guarantee, on “possible ways to expand the existing envelope”, including using top ups from other programmes, inviting Member States to ‘top up’ InvestEU’s national compartments, combining the programme’s project portfolios with those from previous programmes, and optimising InvestEU’s risk assessment methodology.
Irene Tinagli (S&D, Italian), who had negotiated the revision of the programme in 2020 (see EUROPE 12618/21), criticised the Council of the EU for a “drastic reduction” of the public guarantee for InvestEU, from €76 billion to €26 billion, during the negotiations, when Parliament had wanted it to be increased to €90 billion. “If we had put more money, we’d have more investments”, she said.
Like Hélder Sousa Silva (EPP, Portuguese), Ms Tinagli asked whether it would be possible to introduce more flexibility into the programme in order to finance projects in the defence and housing sectors. It is already possible to do this through the various existing investment strands, replied Ms Flores, estimating that “there is no need at this stage to reallocate amounts from one investment strand to another”.
Finally, in response to a question from Markus Ferber (EPP, German) on how InvestEU can influence the ‘European Competitiveness Fund’ announced by the European Commission, as well as the EU’s post-2027 budget, Ms Flores said that progress could be made to make the use of grants and loans more efficient and to allow financial support throughout the life cycle of an innovative company. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)