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Meeting on 9 December in Brussels, EU finance ministers expressed broad support to the Commission's recently announced €315 billion investment plan. They also approved two measures for combating tax fraud and tax avoidance, and agreed on the calculation of the contributions to the single resolution fund.
The Council heard a presentation by the Commission and the European Investment Bank (EIB) on the work of a task force, established in the autumn to identify possible investment projects.
The Commission's €315 billion investment plan, which was unveiled in November, foresees the creation of a new European fund for strategic investment within the EIB group in the spring of 2015. The fund will be built on a €16 billion guarantee from the EU budget and €5 billion from the EIB.
The fund aims to provide risk-bearing capacity that can unlock investments and to back risk finance for SMEs.
After an initial exchange of views the finance ministers expressed broad support for the investment plan. The Council looks forward to a legislative proposal that would give substance to this plan.
The European Council, meeting on 18-19 December, will be called to endorse it.
Opening remarks by Vice-President Katainen at the press conference of the ECOFIN Council
Commissioner Moscovici's remarks at the ECOFIN press conference
Economic governance package: speech by Vladis Dombrovskis
The Permanent Representatives Committee approved, on behalf of the Council, a compromise agreed with the European Parliament on a regulation aimed at increasing the pool of capital available for long-term investment into the EU economy by creating a new form of fund vehicle (16386/14).
These European long-term investment funds (ELTIFs), by virtue of the asset classes that they would be allowed to invest in, are expected to be able to provide investors with long-term, stable returns.
The creation of clearly defined ELTIFs would tackle barriers to long-term investments in, for example, infrastructure projects, thereby stimulating employment and economic growth. ELTIFs would only focus on alternative investments that fall within a defined category of long-term asset classes whose successful development requires investors’ long-term commitment. This would include non-listed undertakings that issue equity or debt instruments for which there is no readily identifiable buyer, real assets that require significant up-front capital expenditure and SMEs admitted to trading on a regulated market or on a multilateral trading facility.