Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2014-11-26-Speech-3-019-000"
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"en.20141126.6.3-019-000"2
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"Mr President, as Mr Juncker knows, our political group likes to look forward to the future, not back to the past, and I must say, Mr Juncker, that I like your analogy of using the watering can. How do we make sure it is a watering can that stimulates growth? How do we make sure that it is not a government flood that washes away private investment? How do we make sure it is not a private irrigation system that is never turned on?
What we need are detailed answers to some of our questions, and I have talked to a number of private investors in the past and asked them what stops them from investing.
I was talking to a large institutional investor last week, with over GBP 600 billion of assets under management, and they told me that quite often government projects are fanciful. They do not see any real return. How do we make sure that we have projects that are attractive to private investors?
Venture capitalists tell me they do not invest, that the AIFMD and other EU legislation make the EU less attractive to investment. How do we tackle those issues? A former German industrialist was talking to me the other day and he asked why it is that the non-euro area is so much better at attracting investment than the euro area. If only the euro area was better! But as you know, it is not. What is it? Is the euro the key to that question?
But the key to the package is: how do we unlock this investment? How do we make sure that this is not just talking about money? How do we make sure that we actually have the reforms, as Manfred Weber was saying, to make sure that we unlock these investments?
And let me give you a couple of examples. A few years ago I was talking to a British company which wanted to invest in Brindisi in Italy. They spent over 11 years trying to invest in an LNG terminal: a huge infrastructure project, but they walked away after 11 years because of bureaucracy and frustration. How do we make sure red tape like that does not stop investment in infrastructure? Or think of another example: Castellón Airport: millions of euro of public money but still, 44 months after being inaugurated, it has not opened. And we know of projects in the middle of nowhere.
So the questions we have to ask are: how do we unlock this private investment without taxpayers taking on the burden of risk? How do we avoid a situation where for private investors it is heads they win and tails taxpayers lose? How do we avoid more Brindisis or more Castellóns? Answer those questions, Mr Juncker. Give us real detail about this investment, tell us why the private sector is not investing at the moment, and maybe then we can support your projects."@en1
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