Right after the Euro Leaders Summit, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told journalists that the Commission will offer to Greece a mysterious €35-billion aid package also called “Development Plan” or “Investment Package”. Juncker said that the package will be given to Greece from now -2015 – until 2020. Five years and seven billion per year for the noble cause of helping Greece out … you think.
What is this mysterious package? Financial aid with no tricky trade? A little help by Greece’s friends for a noble cause? The idea and “promise” is not new. In fact, Juncker repeated what he had said beginning of the month.
On 4th June 2015, Jean-Claude Juncker had tried to lurk the Greek government to proceed with reforms promising the 35-billion-euro package. The money is not given to Greece for free but “the EU was ready to lend €35 billion to Greece between now and 2020.”
“Greece can get a considerable sum, €35 billion euros until 2020, provided that they implemented programs that would enable our Greek friends to master these funds,” said Juncker, speaking to the members of the European Committee of the Regions on Thursday. The money is already reserved to Athens, but the allocation depends on Greek reforms, Juncker said.
A kind of European Union Funding but with interest.
Citing Greek Prefects who were present at the meeting with Juncker, To Vima newspaper of 5. June, writes that the aid funds were “to be directed to projects of businesses with high added value and for the modernization of public structures like hospitals.” Juncker had also said that the funds are big and that they would be distributed to 8 EU countries in total and thus under certain criteria. The money was in addition to EU Funds “National Strategic Reference Framework” (NSRF/ESPA in Greek), which do not have “austerity reforms” as precondition, as Juncker stressed on Monday after the Euro Summit.
Today’s UK’s Telegraph confirmed that the talk is about the Juncker’s Investment Plan and noted:
“This money is not specially allocated to Greece, but part of the investment drive spearheaded by the Luxembourg premier to tackle chronic unemployment and weak investment in the bloc.
Juncker said the funds, which are due to be released between 2015-2020, should remind ordinary Greeks that Brussels was committed to kick-starting the economy.
“The Commission is currently preparing a package on this… the package and the €35bn are conditional to the conditions being met, and obviously an agreement being found,” Spokeswoman Annika Breidthardt said on Tuesday during a press briefing. EU Commissioner’s Moscovici Spokeswoman Breidthardt added that
“from the €35billion, the 20 billion refer to Structural Funds and 15 billion to Agricultural Funds.”
Early in the afternoon, KTG posed a question to Annika Breidthardt asking for information about the EU Funding mechanism that will provide the money as well as the interest rate. Her answer came prompt and “nothing saying.”
@keeptalkingGR I can only quote our chief spokes @MargSchinas: "stay tuned".
— Annika Breidthardt (@A_Breidthardt) June 23, 2015
Juncker’s Investment Plan for Europe
Ende November 204, EC President J-C Juncker revealed his mega-project “Investment Plan for Europe. A project of at least 315 billion euro investment that could flow into EU-wide projects, increasing jobs and improving infrastructure.
Analyst France Coppola took Juncker’s magnificent plan under the magnifying glass and concluded that
“In fact, let us be completely clear. NONE of this money exists. Not a single Euro of it. This is a synthetic structure based entirely upon insurance, not actual funds.”
Stressing that Juncker’s “second attempt at increasing European investment without raising public debt levels, Coppola underlined in her blog that the Funds are supposed to come “both from the EIB [European Investment Bank] and the EU’s own budget.”
Posting an explanation from the European Commission’s factsheet, Coppola demonstrates how this planned fund works:
“The role of the Fund is to mobilise extra private finance in specific sectors and areas. The Fund is estimated to reach a multiplier effect of 1:15 in real investment in the economy. This is the result of the Fund’s initial risk bearing capacity and is an estimated average calculated as follows: For every initial one euro of protection by the Fund, three euro of financing could be provided to a certain project in the form of subordinated debt. Given that this creates a safety buffer in that particular project, private investors can be expected to invest in the senior tranches of that same project. EIB and European Commission experience indicates that 1 euro of subordinated debt catalyses 5 euro in total investment: €1 in subordinated debt and on top of that 4 euro in senior debt. This means that €1 of protection by the fund generates €15 of private investment in the real economy, that would not have happened otherwise. This 1:15 multiplier effect is a prudent average, based on historical experience from EU programmes and the EIB.”
Francis Coppola notes furthermore:
“Note that the actual investment would be Mezzanine + Senior Debt, i.e. EIB subordinated lending plus private sector investment. The Equity portion is described in the factsheet as “protection”. There is no actual money involved. It consists of public guarantees, not real money. In effect, the EU and EIB combined are providing insurance to private sector investors – accepting “first losses” of up to 21bn Euros. The EU’s portion would guarantee the first 16bn Euros of longer-term infrastructure investment: the EIB would guarantee the first 5bn of capital investment in SMEs.”
Too complicated? Yes.
Private Sector Investment and EIB lending? Yes…
Nothing but “smoke and mirrors”? Possible.
A lots of smoke, certainly, when once considers that: 1. Juncker did not reveal terms & conditions or the €36billion package. 2. Why should a country borrow money and burden the tax payers when the money goes also to private sector? 3. What have funding of Business X has to do with “austerity reforms”? 4. Who in the private sector will get the funding?
Channel 4 journalist Paul Mason asked the crucial question:
European Commission promising €35bn aid package if deal done. How it’s “absorbed" will define #Greece future: oligarchic/corrupt or modern?
— Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) June 23, 2015
To me personally and it smells like a kind of an indirect 3. “bailout” package for Greece but just with different terms & conditions yet with the same “Stick to Austerity Cuts” mantras. So, a loan between friends with friendly interest rates… Then 35 billion euro is a huge bag of funding.
Worth noting is that also former Prime Minister Antonis Samaras had made a reference to such a “mysterious package” in form of what he called “a credit support line”. Speaking at the parliament on December 7th 2014, Samaras had praised this mysterious “credit support line ” thus “rejecting it was an enforced loan.” I assume, Samaras’ credit line had to to with the EFSF’s ECCL, a Precautionary Program with enhanced conditions offering partial protection to countries that cannot lend money from the markets but can borrow with low interest rates. Back then, Samaras was praising the Program in the same sentence he was cheering that “Greece was to exit the Bailout Program.”
I suppose Samaras’ credit line program has nothing to do with Juncker’s plan. Or does it?
KTG would appreciate enlightenment on the issue.
The more I discuss with colleagues about it the more I get the impression that Juncker will throw money from several sources into a huge bag and take out a rabbit.
Funds and Loans nicely mixed together. And money that is not there at all.
The generousoffer will be partly a loan, partly funds Greece would have gotten anyway and party money Juncker does not have.
PS If Juncker sticks to the “businesses with high added value” then we know it will be again the oligarchs and the corrupted cronies who will get the pie and the “the friendly people of Greece” will get the pie crumbles…
Either… or… while we’re waiting for the light to go through the smoke, we should also be beware of EU-saving presidents and Dona ferontes.
What a crock.. does he think he’s speaking to a child instead of the leader of a government?
I will remind people again that Juncker is the man who gleefully states that
If a lie is worth 35 billion, one cannot but wonder how serious things will be if this deal does not go through. A carrot worth 35 billion must come with a VERY big stick…
So how should the money be invested? Longer-term infrastructure is a two-edged sword: You also have to pay for maintenance in the future.
Should there be biotech research, marine biology institutes, aerospace industries, clothing factories, an IT start-up scene or organic solar cell companies?
Why would entrepreneurs and investors choose Greece?
If good answers are found, maybe Greece will have an economy comparable to Israel in the future.
Community run bike-factories, -shops, bike-fashion (bags, shoes, cloths –“messenger-industry”), pedi-cabs, pedal-powered yellow submarines, pedal-powered small track trains, wooden framed mind-mills, all ships and boats driven by wind-turbines and batteries, Powerwall-batteries …
No need for solar-parks, cuz they steal away the fields, as 1/3 of Greece is dry like close to desert but with wind-mills it will get green again.
With that money Greece could get stand-alone, outside of capitalism and money-system
ymmd 🙂
looking forward to these mind-mills…
Have a great day 🙂
Reminds me of Heinrich Bölls “Anecdote concerning the Lowering of Productivity” (most students learn about it in highschool).
Developed in Austria and Hangover, wooden framed wind mill towers can be higher than concrete-towers and they are not dead after 25 years, also you don’t need to kill whole woods just to deliver the tower, instead carpenters can construct it at location, even on rocky islands.
Unless Panagiotis Lafazanis gets kidnapped to receive a brainwash this will happen only regional if people produce their own energy and tell the state to fuck off.
The only problem with wind mills are the propellers, because they need Coltan and Coltan still means massmurder but facebook will surely free Congo for minimum wage and against genocide.
If this money would be real one could create “Meltemi Project” Greece there in the end no one would have to pay anything for electricity, water or even trains, cars, boats and ships as they’d all run without gas and capitalism.
“…they’d all run without gas and capitalism….”. Oh, my God… Could you please provide a successful example of a socialist country? Did you ever live in a socialist(communist) country to discuss about how good is in that type of society? Probably, it were better if Stalin’s influence in Greece were much higher after WII , so Greek people today were at the level of Albania without communist dreams.
All your “communist states” are just state capitalism, bosses, state, nation, exploitation and money were still existing.
Stalin’s influence in Greece was too big so the revolution never had any chance as Stalin and Churchill were best friends in dividing the world.
“Stalin’s influence in Greece was too big…” Please read some history books, or at least check internet (Wikipedia). Churchill traded Romania (Stalin’s influence 90%) for Greece (Stalin’s influence 10%). At that time, Romanian communist party was pretty small (and forbidden), while Greek communist party was very powerful. Romanians hated communists and Russians, but Greek loved them. This is a good example how big powers divided the world without to care what other people wanted. You can find a copy of Churchill’s and Stalin’s agreement on
What? The Churchill-Stalin friendship went so far that large parts of the Greek army were refused to fight against the axis, thousands kept in British concentration camps in Middle East and Sudan just because they were communists and had their own “little” Kronstadt-uprising.
Also the counter-revolutionary treaty of Varkiza wouldn’t been seen if the Greek communist party would have acted more independent from Moscow; that’s also the reason why the last big anti-austerity riots were such huge, one (main) slogan was “the treaty of Varkiza is cancelled” – as it was the 12/2/12
Well, the percentage agreement deal between Stalin and Churchill (Yalta, October 1944) was secret. Romanian anti-communists and Greek communist didn’t know about the deal, so they fought several years after the end of WWII thinking that it will be a correct fight (without support from Soviet Union and British, respectively).