(European Views) | Addressing the European Parliament in Strasbourg, President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Junker has described Brexit as ‘a waste of time and a waste of energy.’
BoAML do not think the Juncker-Trump trade agreement is a game changer. Rather they argue that the deal lowers the near-term risk of an auto trade war, supporting their cautious optimism on Europe. However, the deal is largely symbolic in nature, and as we have seen with past “ceasefires”, it may not last long.
Ana Fuentes | “The European leaders will also have to deal with insuring and enlarging a multilateral open system for trade, threatened not only by the US policies, which will lead to Germany having to accept more responsibility within the EU and in the world – and this includes not only the fields of economy and finance,” says Joachim Bitterlich, who was advisor to former Chancellor Helmut Kohl and is currently Professor at the ESCP School in Paris.
Spain is the second country after Italy to benefit from the Juncker Plan, which ends in 2018. There are already 53 operations ongoing, with 4.5 billion euros financing from the EIB, which will facilitate the mobilisation of over 28 billion euros of total investment.
Spain has major access to the funds mobilised by the Juncker Plan. Many companies, like Gestamp and El Corte Inglés, are already benefitting with projects worth some 15 billion euros.
Nick Ottens via Atlantic Sentinel | In his annual State of the Union European Commission speech, president Jean-Claude Juncker’s proposals for closer EU integration is a throwback to the false dichotomy of more or less Europe. Furthermore, they contradict the “multispeed Europe” that has been endorsed by France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
In 2016, Spain was once again the European country which received the most funding from the European Investment Bank (EIB), for a total of 11.5 billion euros, in terms of investment per unit of GDP or, in other words, in relation to the size of its economy.
The future of Europe has more to do with investment than with the ECB. In this context, the so-called Juncker Plan is especially interesting for driving investment, against a backdrop of continued uncertainty for companies. This is a note from Intermoney’s analysts.
There has been a lot of song and dance about extending the ‘Junker Plan’ to promote investments of up to 630 billion euros over the next six years. But the fact is that, up to now, projects worth 116 billion euros have been approved under the auspices of the Plan, according to the European Commission (EC)’s own estimates.
Calls for keeping a low-key profile till the new UK Prime Minister takes office and agrees terms with its EU partners on the broad Brexit strategy seem to be being largely ignored. Mr Juncker jumped on the opportunity to deliver a stern and ill-timed warning to the UK.