EU, the 300 billion investment plan will arrive before Christmas. This was announced by the president-elect of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, presenting himself to the Strasbourg parliament to ask for confidence. This afternoon the vote that promises to be taken for granted.
Shortly before, he had clarified: "There has been much talk of the stability pact without thinking much about it: I want to be clear, the rules do not change and must be interpreted according to what was indicated by the European Council in June, they must be interpreted with that margin of flexibility allowed by the treaty and from the legal texts, so there will be no drastic changes".
Juncker proposed the middle ground between austerity and flexibility in the interpretation of the rules: those who think that debt and deficits lead to long-term growth are wrong, as are those who think that with "mere budgetary consolidation without flexibility and without structural reforms, it can be offer a solution". Instead, we need both fiscal discipline and growth and investment.
“Italy's greatest victory in Europe is to have proposed and in some ways imposed a 300 billion investment plan. It is the first sign of attention not only to austerity and rigor, but also to growth and investments”, commented Matteo Renzi in Rome, who spoke in Parliament on the eve of tomorrow's European Council and on Friday.
With his statements Juncker undoubtedly wanted to reach out to the PSE which had asked to act to allocate a part of the funds of the European Stability Mechanism (the ESM is the fund to save states) to the EIB to strengthen its capital and really make it the financial engine of the European Investment Plan. Furthermore, the PES deems it necessary for the European Commission to ensure that expenditure for investments in European projects is not calculated in national budgets for the purposes of the rules of the stability pact. These two proposals are part of the arsenal of measures discussed at a technical level in recent weeks also by Juncker's staff, on which, however, no decision has yet been taken.
