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How do our leaders decide what makes a project worth investing in to develop our education, health, research, transport or digital infrastructures? This is the question facing member states, the European Parliament and us in the run up to the June European Council where the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI) is planned to be agreed.

European Ministers of Finance and Economy agree with the European Commission that the EFSI’s Steering Board – that will develop guidelines on how to invest the billions of euros available from the EFSI – “should avoid political influence over the selection of projects, [and] the board members would come from the Commission and the European Investment Bank (EIB) only”. Because investing is a political decision and not a mere technical matter, the governance and objective of the EFSI must be clear before its adoption in June.

Investing is politics in the sense that we want to ensure that it delivers on expected results for all people living in the EU. Social Platform is asking for the regulation to push for investment in ambitious integrated social policies, including social protection, social services and social economy, in line with the 2013 social investment package. We also want the selection of any investment project to include social and equality preconditions as the European Structural Funds do. The selected project should be consistent with the EU’s priorities of reducing poverty and social exclusion and tackling all forms of discrimination; we are asking for an expert on social policies on the Investment Committee – that will decide which projects will receive funding – to assess applications to ensure that they deliver on these objectives.

Investing is also politics when it comes to accountability to democratically elected representatives. The failure of the Troika in Greece has triggered a lot of questions around the democratic legitimacy of structures run by non-elected bodies. For this reason, the European Parliament is asking for a “bigger role in supervising the operations of the EFSI, in selecting its top officials and in the decisions on how to feed the fund.” The Parliament has demanded a report every six months and the ability to summon the Chair of the Steering Board to speak before members.

I support the Commission’s goal to be effective and efficient in ensuring swift investments in our economy to avoid a worsening of the situation in Europe; but I do not think that our calls to ensure that investments repair the social consequences of the crisis and are controlled by our democratic institutions are running against these objectives. I am sure that before June we will find a way to ensure that the fund responds to the political objective of serving the social priorities of the EU. Investing is politics.

Let’s engage!

Pierre Baussand, Director