The Invest-EU program, which was launched to promote community investment and innovation between the period 2021-2027, could experience a shock. This was revealed on Monday by the European Commission, which has detailed that it is studying increasing the financing of this guarantee program given the rise in demand from the private sector for the coming years in clean technologies.
“We are studying how to increase the global financing of InvestEU, in particular for the period 2024-2027”, has advanced the Commissioner for the Economy, Paolo Gentiloni, this Monday in the framework of the Budget committee of the European Parliament. A reflection that, he explained, responds to the fact that “market demand for certain products far exceeds InvestEU’s capacity” and, given the Industrial Plan of the Green Pact, an increase in demand for its guarantees is expected.
In her speech, the vice-president of the European Investment Bank, responsible for supervising the InvestEU guarantees, Teresa Czerwinska, has signed that “the reception of the market is very strong”, for which reason she has considered “insufficient” the current financing of the program to the demand for “innovative, fast-growing companies.”
In this sense, the Italian commissioner stressed that this is “a sign of the importance of this program and the success it is having”, for which he urged “to reflect on how we can strengthen this instrument”.
A glove picked up by the Budget Commissioner, Johannes Hahn, to point out that the long-term community budget review is expected to take place in July. A framework in which he has appealed to “be realistic” and have more “flexibility” in the face of “unpredictable” future events.
For his part, Gentiloni recalled that “by the end of 2023, about 15,000 million euros of EU guarantees must be approved, so there will only be about 11,000 million euros for the remaining years until the end of this program multi-year financial It should be remembered that the Invest EU program was born as a successor to the Junker Plan, with an endowment of 26,000 million euros for the period between 2021 and 2027.
In a further step, it has detailed that 21,000 of the 26,000 million euros of the EU guarantee program have been committed. A figure that has been used to finance projects related to hydrogen technologies, electric vehicle batteries, renewable production plants in southern European countries or fiber optics to homes in Central Europe.
In addition, the Budget Commissioner has advocated promoting cross-border projects between Member States. The solution, in his opinion, involves more cooperation between countries or “more joint programs” and has urged “think big” in the European industry.
