Germany’s KfW and France’s CDC back new long-term investment group at EU Parliament

A new group focused on long-term investment has been formed at the European Parliament with the backing of Germany’s KfW, France’s Caisse des Depots, Italy’s Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP) and Spain’s Instituto de Crédito Oficial (ICO).
The quartet of institutions are all members of the Long-Term Investors Club (LTIC), the body
which gathers 19 major financial institutions and institutional investors with assets totalling $5.4trn that was launched in 2009. Other LTIC members include the likes of OMERS, TIAA–CREF and the China Development Bank.
The ‘Intergroup on long-term investment and reindustrialisation’ was formed last month under the leadership of a group of MEPs including France’s Dominique Riquet, Italy’s Simona Bonafe and Romania’s Adina-Ioana Valean.

Riquet, a surgeon by training who is a former mayor of Valenciennes in northern France, will chair the group.He is a Christian Democrat, part of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) group in the Parliament. The new group’s main aim is to “bring around the same table the three interlinked parts of a triangle consisting of project promoters, investors and legislators”.

Long-term investment in Europe, they reckon, has “reached a stalemate” due in part to a “lack of trust” in the market due to regulatory and fiscal obstacles and the lack a stable business environment. KfW, CDC and the others will help with the secretariat of the group, one of a range of so-called intergroups, informal groupings that can be formed by MEPs from any political group and any committee.
The new body will organise at least four events this year, including an inaugural event in the coming weeks focused on the ‘Juncker Plan’ to mobilize investor capital and then an event on climate change ahead of the COP21 talks in Paris later in the year.