Greek Gov’t Welcomes Juncker’s Pledge for United Europe

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s call for a united Europe; one that is fair, tolerant and safe, was warmly received by the Greek government this week.

In his annual policy speech on Wednesday, Juncker announced that the European Investment Fund would provide a total of at least 500 billion euros of investments by 2020. “And we will work beyond that to reach 630 billion euros by 2022,” he added.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras expressed his satisfaction over Juncker’s “diagnosis” that “Our European Union is, at least in part, in an existential crisis… Never before have I seen so much fragmentation, and so little commonality in our Union.”

“President Juncker’s point that the EU is not sufficiently social and there is need to change is a step in the right direction,” Tsipras responded via his Twitter account.

The Commission chief underlined the need to attract private investment.“We also need to create the right environment to invest in,” he said, adding that European banks were now “in much better shape than two years ago”.

A priority for the Commission is to accelerate work on the Capital Markets Union in order to make the financial system more resilient. “It will give companies easier and more diversified access to finance… Right now, the options are very limited. The Capital Markets Union will offer alternative, vital sources of funding to help start-ups get started – business angels, venture capital, market financing,” Juncker said.

He also referred to more than 200,000 small firms and start-ups across Europe which got loans and over 100,000 people who found jobs under the new European Fund for Strategic Investments.

Juncker added that the idea now is to use public funding “as a guarantee to attract public and private investment to create real jobs”.