BRUSSELS - European Commission president
Jean-Claude Juncker is to unveil his highly-anticipated €300bn investment plan
next week (24-30 November) with most of the focus set to be on how much is 'new'
money and how much is just recycled from existing funds.
The plan, announced by Juncker before he was elected into office, has taken
on a significant symbolic importance as it is meant to be a way of kickstarting
the struggling EU economy.
But although the idea was welcomed from the offset, it was immediately dogged
with questions about where the money would come from, and how much would be from
the public and private sectors.
The commission has already indicated that it will include a
recently-announced German public investment programme, of €10bn, in its
calculations but has also said several times that the new funds should not
create new debt in member states.
Meanwhile, the EU's 'growth pact', announced in 2012, casts a long shadow. It
largely failed in its bid to generate growth and relied heavily on leveraging
€10bn of new money for the European Investment Bank to give the pact its
headline €120bn of funds.
The investment fund is set to be decided Tuesday (25 November) and formally
unveiled before parliament on Wednesday. This gives time for the entire
commission to attend a motion of censure against Juncker, filed by eurosceptics
in the European Parliament, on Monday evening.
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