A senior Socialist Euro MP today called for the recapitalisation of the European Investment Bank, allowing it to offer up to €25 billion in loans, in a dramatic measure to help Europe’s car producers and their 10 million workers.
Car industry leaders have said they need €15 billion. But sources in Brussels suggest the bank can provide only seven billion.
Socialist Group vice-president Robert Goebbels, who is in charge of group policy on industry, said: “The car industry is a cornerstone of EU employment. It urgently needs a lifeline to safeguard its future and save jobs.
“The EU Summit should give political approval for an imaginative use of the EU’s five billion euro recovery fund. By using the funds to recapitalise the EIB, it would be possible to inject up to €25 billion into the economy.”
Mr Goebbels, a former economics minister of Luxembourg, explained: “The EIB is a triple-A rated bank. As such, it can easily turn the five billion euro into five times as much to be offered as loans that will of course have to be repaid.
“This will get round the problem that commercial banks are simply not lending money. At present no bank is lending more than 50 million euro to a European automotive company — and that is peanuts.”
Mr Goebbels said a European initiative would prevent multinationals such as the American car giant GM from playing off one EU country against another. The move would provide security for works in the EU’s 257 car plants and more than 7,000 companies that supply the industry with components.
Press release by the Party of European Socialists in the Europen Parliament.
Tags: Economie, Emploi, Industrie, Socialistes européens
