29.11.2019 Pascal Lagarde: The priorities of InvestEU will be digitalization, environmental projects and energy links

Digitalization, environmental projects and energy links are the top three priorities for the new investment program InvestEU, which will succeed and build on the so-called Juncker Plan in the 2021/2027 period, said Pascal Lagarde, Executive Director, Strategy, Development and International Relations at Bpifrance, during the Annual Meeting of the EIF Shareholders in Sofia, hosted by the Bulgarian Development Bank.
Bpifrance expects that the program will be aimed "largely at the market goals, which we all know well, and most of all at the opportunity to finance small and medium-sized enterprises to invest in intangible assets," he said.
InvestEU is expected to mobilize further investments of at least € 650 billion between 2021 and 2027. For comparison, the Juncker Plan already generated €371 billion in investments that reached 635,000 small businesses.
Lagarde also stated that the good programs implemented by the European Investment Fund in the current period were expected to be maintained in the same form. "And our third big priority is this: we think that the financial framework so far has had a huge impact on the interactions between the national development banks, the European Investment Bank Group and the European Commission. In this regard, I believe we should go even further in this direction", the expert said.
According to him, the new program has three major challenges. "The first is to keep this very high level of risk in the projects that we can finance through InvestEU. This means that the European Commission must have the same "appetite" for risks. Secondly, we need to maintain a high level of attractiveness in our financial instruments and their terms. Thirdly, we must support one of the largest pillars of the market, i.e. the private equity, throughout Europe. We are talking about big capital here”, he explained.
Lagarde also underlined the important role of financial intermediaries in the implementation of the plan, which will help the final beneficiaries overcome any possible difficulties.