There needs to be another phase of reinvestment, like during the pandemic, and perhaps Eurobonds based on industrial priorities, French President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday in a special Davos conference address.
Macron also showed support for Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, who aired back in early December the need for EU defence bonds to fight Russia’s illegal aggression of Ukraine.
“The Estonian prime minister, whose country is known for its economic ‘frugality’, had the courage to suggest that Eurobonds should be issued for defence issues in Ukraine,” Macron said.
“Come what may, we must invest much more,” he added.
The announcement comes just days after EU Internal Market Chief Thierry Breton called on the EU to be “ready to take risks” to boost defence production, including through public co-financing, as he pitched a €100 billion fund for EU defence industry cooperation.
“There is a need for common and joint investments” on defence matters, he added in an exchange with journalists in Paris on Monday.
As the US introduced its large-scale Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) investment package over the past year, hopes ran high that the EU would create its own European sovereignty fund and a new round of fresh EU cash.
France was a day-one supporter of the idea. “New fresh EU money, that’s all the president talks about,” a Macron advisor told Euractiv in November.
But member states in-fighting, and European Commission Ursula von der Leyen’s reticence in going for another round of EU debt did away with the full-fledged sovereignty fund and instead came up with a smaller-scale financing platform, the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP).
In Davos, Macron also highlighted the creation of a European Markets Union (EMU) as one of his priorities. “We absolutely must have a financial Europe that is much more integrated because our continent has a lot of savings, but these savings are not circulating towards the right places, towards the right sectors”.
This is due to “self-imposed blocks,” he said. “If we can’t move forward [with 27 member states], then France will propose a reinforced cooperation on this issue”.
(Théo Bourgery-Gonse, Euractiv France)
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Source: euractiv.com
