Exchange of views with Jyrki KATAINEN, Vice-President of the EC in charge of Jobs, Growth, Investment and Competitiveness, at the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, about Juncker Investment plan. Debate with MEPs. Questions&nbsp;by Udo BULLMANN (S&amp;D, DE)&nbsp;&nbsp;and Pablo ZALBA BIDEGAIN (EPP, ES).

Brussels

exchange of views

KATAINEN, Jyrki (FI, EC)

Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs

BULLMANN, Udo (S&D, DE)

ZALBA BIDEGAIN, Pablo (EPP, ES)

European Commission's Investment Plan (T)

Exchange of views with Jyrki KATAINEN, Vice-President of the EC in charge of Jobs, Growth, Investment and Competitiveness at the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs: extracts

Arrival of Jyrki KATAINEN and atmosphere shots (2 shots)

SOUNDBITE (English), Jyrki KATAINEN, Vice-President of the EC in charge of Jobs, Growth, Investment and Competitiveness, &ldquo;The investment plan is not a stimulus measure, instead is a set of structural measures that will change Europe permanently into a positive direction.&rdquo;

SOUNDBITE (English), Jyrki KATAINEN, Vice-President of the EC in charge of Jobs, Growth, Investment and Competitiveness, &ldquo;The final principle is that it should be complimentary to normal EIB lending and to normal market lending because we do not want to replace private money by tax payer&rsquo;s money. The whole idea is that the new fund would mobilise more private money to investment.&rdquo;

SOUNDBITE (English), Jyrki KATAINEN, Vice-President of the EC in charge of Jobs, Growth, Investment and Competitiveness, &ldquo;The projects should be high risk projects. Just to give some ideas or examples of the projects that have higher risk and which cannot be financed by private sector completely are pilot projects of new technologies . For instance, a new technology for solar power, or wage energy, or smart cities, things like that.&rdquo;

SOUNDBITE (Spanish), Pablo ZALBA BIDEGAIN (EPP, ES), &ldquo;What kind of impact that is going to have on GDP and how many jobs that is going to create?&rdquo;

SOUNDBITE (English), Jyrki KATAINEN, Vice-President of the EC in charge of Jobs, Growth, Investment and Competitiveness, &ldquo;We have not counted what kind of impact a project pipeline or a single market development would have. But &euro;300bn additional investment, if they really are additional to the normal one would get some &euro;1.3 million additional jobs. We have to go or move on in various fronts, together with this and monetary policy, structural reforms in our member states and also prioritisation of budget policy to investments it can really make a change.&rdquo;

SOUNDBITE (German), Udo BULLMANN (S&amp;D, DE), &ldquo;Who is deciding at the end of the day? Is it going to be the investment committee with the experts or it is going to be the EIB? Who is going to be the final decision-maker and where is the Parliament responsible? Cash-in is going to come from the budget of the EU which is approve by the EP, if I correctly understood the budgets as my colleagues explained to me. Is a question of our responsibility to our citizens not only is about to spend citizens money, but to decide how it is spend. So we do need to be involve in the decisions that will be taken.&rdquo;

SOUNDBITE (English), Jyrki KATAINEN, Vice-President of the EC in charge of Jobs, Growth, Investment and Competitiveness , &ldquo;The selection of the projects and the final decision will be done by the investment committee, political independent or not depending of political decision-making. Basically, legally, the signing of projects it would be for the EIB governors council. At that level there is no type of political assessment.&rdquo;