Von der Leyen: Public Investment Insufficient to Develop Clean Technologies

The 400 billion euros already invested in the EU Next Generation plan and the 550 billion approved as national public support by the European Union are not enough to guarantee a safe transition to new green technologies or clean energy. This was announced by the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen at the plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg. It dealt with the outcome of the last European Council meeting.

It’s time to raise money, that is, to ask for support and find a “systemic solution” that could mobilize huge European private capital. An essential part of that solution could be “finalizing the Capital Markets Union (CMU),” the European Commission chief said. According to her estimates, this amount could be as high as 470 billion euros per year. “Once the Capital Markets Union is finalized, the EU will be able to receive €470 billion per year from private investment. These are additional private investments that we could attract every year if we completed the establishment of the Capital Markets Union,” von der Leyen emphasized.

As European media recall, the European Capital Markets Union project began with an action plan presented back in 2015 by then European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. The aim of the plan is to create rules for all EU countries to build a single capital market. Since then, the rules of the various European financial markets have remained fragmented. The initiative was updated in a new roadmap in September 2020. It launched 16 legislative and non-legislative initiatives by the EU executive.

According to von der Leyen, it is time to move from words to deeds. “Since the start of our mandate,” she said, “we have made progress on many fronts. For example, we have made it easier for European companies, especially SMEs, to list on the capital markets. But we’ve also experienced gridlock on the Board on many important aspects of CMU moving forward.”

The last session of the European Council was a turning point. Brussels has been given a clear mandate to move on three vital issues, ranging from harmonizing national rules on some complex issues such as insolvency to developing and introducing cross-border savings products for retail investors and finally strengthening European-level supervision of the most important market operators. “It will give investors the predictability they need. Thus, the path is clear. If we want to finance a new industrial revolution for our time, we need to mobilize European private capital. It is time to turn political will into action,” von der Leyen concluded.