Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-04-07-Speech-4-009-000"
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"en.20110407.3.4-009-000"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, first of all, may I thank you for inviting me once again to take part in the debate on your report on the activities of the European Investment Bank – this is becoming a real tradition.
Lastly, to conclude, the third area: no power can expect to conduct an external policy without financial support. China has learnt that. It intervenes financially throughout the world in order to support its external policy objectives. If the European Union really does want to develop an external policy that has some influence in the world, then it too must have a financial arm. If the European Union so wishes, the EIB can be that arm. That is one of the conclusions of the Camdussus report on the EIB’s external mandate. It remains to be seen whether the Member States, which are also shareholders of the EIB, will act on that recommendation and make a clear decision when preparing the financial perspective for 2014-2020.
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, there you have an overview of the EIB’s three-pronged approach for the years to come.
I should like to thank your rapporteur, Mr Cutaş, in particular. He had the good sense not to look at matters only in retrospect, but provided guidelines for the future as well. This is essentially what I should like to talk to you about, if I may. You mention that our Board of Directors has devised a three-pronged approach to the European Investment Bank’s work over the next few years. We will develop our work in three areas: the implementation of the Europe 2020 strategy, the fight against climate change and support for EU external policy.
When faced with the financial, then economic, crisis that erupted in 2008, the Member States provided a short-term response: the various national plans, which were intended initially to keep the banks afloat and then to stimulate an economic recovery. Those national plans, as you know, were supported by the European economic recovery plan, adopted by the European Council in December 2008. The EIB played its part by increasing the volume of its lending from EUR 48 billion in 2007 to EUR 79 billion in 2009, and by channelling that injection of funds into the real economy towards the areas described as a priority by the Council, in particular, support for small and medium-sized enterprises, as your rapporteur has just emphasised.
However, after that short-term response, which enabled us to avoid the worst, a longer-term response is now needed. That is where the Europe 2020 strategy comes in, and the critical part of that strategy is the increase in the employment rate and productivity, which must be based on what is often called the knowledge triangle: training, research and innovation. The EIB is ready to make a significant contribution to the implementation of that strategy. Back in 2010, it provided more than EUR 4 billion in finance for projects in the education sector and more than EUR 7 billion for RDI – research, development and innovation – projects.
The EIB intends to increase its financing in those areas and, to that end, it intends to continue to implement, together with the European Commission, joint financing instruments on the model of the RSFF – the Risk Sharing Finance Facility – for research, as instruments of that kind give the European budget leverage. With the same amount of funds, the European budget can bear a much greater volume of investment and, at the same time, these joint instruments relieve the capital constraint on the EIB. This means that, with the same amount of capital, the EIB can increase the volume of its lending.
I mentioned the RSFF, the Risk Sharing Finance Facility for research. It is a good example. At the end of 2010, with a budget contribution of some EUR 390 million and an EIB capital allocation of some EUR 700 million, we were actually able to lend more than EUR 6 billion, which financed more than EUR 16 billion of investment in research. You can therefore see the two kinds of leverage that such an instrument affords, and so it seems clear to us that the EIB’s contribution to the Europe 2020 strategy will be all the more effective because we will be able to rely on pragmatic cooperation with the Commission and with other financial institutions, too.
The second area: the fight against climate change and its sometimes tragic consequences. This has become a priority for the European Union, and hence also for the EIB. The Fukushima nuclear accident and the questions to which it gives rise further strengthen the need for huge investment in energy saving, renewable energies and new energy technologies.
In 2010, EIB loans for projects directly contributing to a reduction in the volume of greenhouse gas emissions increased to almost EUR 20 billion, or almost 30% of our total lending. The loans for renewable energy projects accounted for EUR 6.2 billion of our total lending, and were used mainly for wind and solar power projects. The loans for energy efficiency improvement projects increased to EUR 2.3 billion in 2010. They will increase further over the next few years, as there is huge potential for energy saving, particularly in public buildings and homes in many European towns and cities. As for investment to develop urban transport, and hence to reduce pollution from individual means of transport, the EIB provided EUR 7.9 billion in loans in 2010.
Consequently, we are going to continue this effort. We are going to continue to support energy saving, energy efficiency and renewable energies, and we are also spearheading the development of a methodology – an inevitably complex one, given the technical difficulties – to evaluate more precisely the carbon footprint of all the projects that we finance. This particular effort testifies to our will to make the fight against climate change a major priority."@en1
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