AUTHORS: Raphael Sauter – Andrea Illes – Jorge Núñez Ferrer

Proper implementation of the ambitious Europe 2020 strategy would require very large scale investments. While the EU budget can provide support for the strategy, its role remains marginal compared to national and subnational expenditure.

IEEP with CEPS has completed a study for the Committee of the Regions focusing on financing the Europe 2020 strategy. The study analyses the available investment needs estimates to finance the flagship initiatives of the strategy and assesses the European Commission’s often quoted €1.8 trillion estimate on the investment required for the implementation of the Europe 2020 strategy. The study finds that the Commission’s figures can at best be considered as a very rough estimate and overall it appears too low as numerous areas are not included.

The study also analyses the relative importance of subnational budgets in financing the Europe 2020 Strategy through reviewing the potential contribution of different funding sources, namely public funding at EU, national and subnational level and private sources. This assessment confirms the potential role of local and regional authorities in financing the strategy and highlights the considerable funding gap in public sources that needs to be filled by private funding sources if the 2020 goals are to be reached.

Finally, the study identifies opportunities for the new governance structure linked to the European Semester to be used to improve the financing of Europe 2020.

The full study can be found here.