Mr. Andrew McDowell:

The EIB has no formal institutional view on this issue because we are not part of the European Commission-Council-Parliament trilogue on these issues. I will express a personal view, however. We see the levels of infrastructure investment in Europe as being at an all-time low, certainly well below pre-crisis levels and, in our view, they are at a level that is not sustainable if we want to reinforce the recovery that is taking place in the European economy. They are at levels that will potentially severely hamper productivity growth within Europe, and regional economic development across the regions of Europe, unless they are increased significantly. We certainly think there is a need at both national and EU levels to look at the constraints that are holding back levels of public investment in infrastructure.

As to whether there is going to be another debate on the fiscal rules, frankly I do not know. One issue that could be considered, though, if there were to be a relaxation of the fiscal rules to facilitate more investment, is whether the flexibility would be used on good projects. That is a debate and a concern that member states have. Will it be used on projects that really have a very strong economic, environmental and social impact or on more politically driven projects, such as bridges to nowhere? There is a history of that, to be frank. One possibility is to provide more flexibility in the fiscal rules for projects that are co-financed by the EIB.