Brussels, 24 February – Just days after political leaders and industry CEOs met at the third European Industry Summit in Antwerp (11 February), a new report from Counter Balance warns that InvestEU, the EU’s flagship mechanism to provide financial support to industry, is expanding public guarantees while failing to ensure policy steer and democratic accountability. The instrument is set to become the cornerstone of the upcoming European Competitiveness Fund (ECF) under the next EU budget. However, unless reformed, it will fail to ensure that industries increase productive investment and contribute to a just transition.
One of the central demands of the original Antwerp Declaration was the expansion of de-risking and the acceleration of deregulation to make Europe “more competitive.” Through the reform of InvestEU, the Commission has catered to the wishes of industry: scaling up public support via guarantees and equity investments to secure private profits, while leaving the broader lack of policy steer and democratic accountability unaddressed.
As the negotiations over the EU’s next long-term budget are currently underway, these concerns take on added urgency. The proposed ECF is expected to scale up the use of de-risking instruments. The European Commission celebrates InvestEU’s alleged success in mobilising nearly €300 billion over four years. These numbers are based on estimations, while only a fraction of investments have already materialised. Moreover, a comprehensive assessment of InvestEU’s contribution to mobilising new investment in the real economy is still lacking, despite several critical reports by the European Court of Auditors questioning the added value of InvestEU’s predecessor — the Juncker Plan — and its potential role in the European Competitiveness Fund.
According to the report’s findings, InvestEU has critically lacked policy steer from the outset. Vague definitions of “additionality” have allowed public guarantees to support projects proposed by companies with ample own resources and access to funding on financial markets without ensuring they truly benefit society or the environment. Expanding de-risking tools under such loose criteria risks further weakening accountability in the use of public money.
Marilisa Marigliano, Research and Advocacy Officer at Counter Balance, said: “Industries receiving public support should be compelled to commit their own large resources to projects that create quality jobs and produce environmentally sustainable goods and services like access to public mobility and affordable energy. InvestEU has instead guaranteed the profits of companies that have been unwilling to innovate in the past and it is unclear what are the wider benefits for the society.”
A key example highlighted is the case of Verkor’s Gigafactory in Dunkirk, France. Since 2021, Renault Group has been a major shareholder of Verkor. In 2024, while the car manufacturer booked record profits and increased dividends, InvestEU concluded Verkor was not sufficiently profitable and required public support. The report finds that the European energy intensive industry in general has made large profits and that InvestEU is currently unable to ensure new productive investments and change the business model of industrial actors. The author recommends adopting social and environmental conditions that require beneficiaries to reinvest profits into environmentally sustainable productive activities and contribute to a just transition.
The governance structure is another source of concern. Despite bearing minimal investment risk, the European Investment Bank and other European public investors implementing the programme, as well as commercial intermediary banks and funds, play a decisive role in selecting final beneficiaries, shaping project design and determining whether investments contribute to European climate objectives. Meanwhile, monitoring and political oversight remain limited. Without adequate transparency, European institutions cannot verify whether publicly guaranteed projects genuinely deliver wider public benefits.
Marilisa Marigliano adds: “An industrial policy that promotes the decarbonisation of the European economy, as the Clean Industrial Deal claims to do, requires more policy steer, which can be only done through increased transparency and accountability. Instead, the reforms of InvestEU introduced to ‘increase competitiveness’ undermine this.”
At a moment when EU-level public investment in decarbonisation and support for a just transformation is most urgently needed, the report argues that InvestEU risks fuelling a failing industrial policy that does not combine decarbonisation with increased productive investment in the European economy, let alone promote a transition that leaves no one behind. These concerns must be addressed before replicating or scaling up the InvestEU model within the ECF.
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About Counter Balance
Counter Balance is a coalition of 9 NGOs whose mission is to make European public finance a key driver of the transition towards socially and environmentally sustainable and equitable societies.
Over the last decade, it has monitored extensively the operations of the EIB and led campaigns to make it a more sustainable, democratic and transparent institution. For more information: https://counter-balance.org/
Social and Green EIB Coalition
Counter Balance, together with 12 other labour unions, as well as social and environmental CSOs, launched a campaign calling for the European Investment Bank (EIB) to deliver public investment in green and social infrastructure and services that put people first. Read more.