The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, reaffirmed this Tuesday in Davos her support for a “European sovereignty fund” to support the EU industry in the face of rising energy prices and Chinese state aid and americans. “In the medium term, we will prepare a European sovereignty fund as part of the mid-term review of our budget that will take place at the end of this year,” said the official during the first day of debates organized by the World Economic Forum (WEF), without specify how this fund would be financed.
“But because it will take time, we will look at a transition solution to provide rapid and targeted support where it is most needed. To this end, we are hard at work on a needs assessment,” he added.
Decisive meeting in three weeks
The idea of a sovereignty fund, based on joint financing at the EU level, had already been formulated by Ursula von der Leyen but ran into the hostility of many member countries, including Germany, net contributors to the European budget concerned about seeing their the bills rise even higher. The president of the European Commission was evasive this Friday during a visit to Sweden, a country ideologically hostile to state intervention, which holds the presidency of the Council of the EU until June.
Initially, European money should be limited to reallocating existing funds, diplomats acknowledge. The Twenty-seven seek to coordinate before a European summit of heads of state and government on February 9 and 10, and have mandated the European Commission to present proposals at the end of January.
Simplification of state aid rules
In Davos, Ursula von der Leyen also reaffirmed that the Commission will propose to “temporarily adapt (its) state aid rules to speed up and simplify things”.
Ursula von der Leyen, however, expressed her concern on Tuesday about a possible “fragmentation” of the European market, pointing out that “only a few Member States” have sufficient budgetary margins to resort to public aid, with the danger of it occurring a race for subsidies. advantage for the largest and richest countries. That is why “we must increase EU funding”, she has insisted.
Source: BFM TV
