‘Juncker Plan’ to benefit poorer EU members
The European Commission has announced plans to improve the geographical reach of its flagship investment scheme known as ‘the Juncker plan’.
The scheme seeks to attract private funds to finance investments, the more risky parts of which are covered by the European Fund for Strategic Investment (EFSI) using €21bn of public money.
It appeared that the first year of its operation showed that mainly the richest 15 countries of the 28-nation bloc benefited from it.
The European Investment Bank (EIB) said in an evaluation report on the plan that a year into the three-year scheme, the programme had generated €104.75bn of investment, or one-third of the planned outcome.
However, it also said that nearly all of the money spent so far had gone to the 15 richest countries in the bloc, leaving the other 13 poorer ones out.
Commission spokeswoman Annika Breidthardt said on 5 October that such geographical distribution of projects financed by EFSI was a result of demand.
Breidthardt added: “Despite this, the commission agrees that geographical coverage can be further improved.
“Our proposal places a stronger emphasis on leveraging local knowledge to facilitate EFSI support across the EU.”
To encourage projects also from the 13 poorer EU countries, they will get “targeted technical assistance services at local level across the EU” from the European Investment Advisory Hub (EIAH) and the commission will encourage the EIB to be more active there too.
