Be the first to comment!The south does not feature in the “Juncker Plan,” says Alfred Sant
 Email item
|  Print item
|
|
Labour MEP Alfred Sant told the European Parliament that the Juncker Plan is further emphasising the structural divergences that already exist between the economies of southern Europe and those of central Europe.
Dr Sant said there is too great a concentration of projects in the bigger economies of the Single Market, with southern and other peripheral small economies practically not featuring at all.
"Indeed, one could claim that the "European Fund for Strategic Investment" (EFSI) is providing an example of how under EU initiatives, a transfer of resources from the periphery to the centre is occurring, further emphasising structural divergences," remarked the Maltese MEP during the debate 'Mid-term review of the Investment Plan at the European Parliament.
One year on from the launch of the "European Fund for Strategic Investment" (EFSI), better known as the Juncker Plan, MEPs voiced sharply divided verdicts on the progress of the €315 billion investment plan for Europe in a debate with EU Commission Vice-President Jyrki Katainen.
The MEP said, "I am among those who are very disappointed with the outcomes of EFSI's first year. The Commission's euphoria about the results cannot be reconciled with the reality. But I am unsurprised things have turned out this way. The financial fundamentals of EFSI, based on relatively insignificant "own" funds, levered extensively through guarantees to surpass 300 billion euros with private capital, militate against a choice of projects considered by markets as having low payoffs or too risky.
"The institutional fundamentals of EFSI, tied into the European Investment Bank framework, constrain the Fund to follow the EIB operational model. The claim is that some low risk, longterm infrastructural projects launched by EFSI would have featured as an EIB project otherwise. Similarly projects have been concentrated in infrastructural areas which can only be considered as "safe". For them, non-EFSI finance could easily have been found," said Dr Sant.
He concluded by saying that,"most of the approved projects have been in large EU countries, namely in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK. To date Malta has not benefited from the Juncker Plan."
