La fabrique des investisseurs publics

Abstract

Objet de croissantes recherches, l’usage d’« instruments financiers » (prêts, garanties, participations) est l’un des traits saillants des politiques européennes des dix dernières années. Cet article analyse ce phénomène à l’aide d’une approche « internaliste » de la financiarisation des politiques publiques, attentive à la pénétration des techniques et regards financiers dans les pratiques concrètes des acteurs publics. Au travers du cas de la financiarisation des fonds structurels, montrée comme un point de départ important pour l’usage d’instruments financiers, le texte permet de sonder l’ancienneté et la profondeur des liens établis depuis les années 1960 et au sein des institutions européennes, entre impératif d’intégration communautaire et mobilisation des capitaux privés. L’ancrage de cette vision implique aujourd’hui, pour des acteurs comme la Commission européenne ou la Banque européenne d’investissement, d’apprendre aux gestionnaires locaux de fonds européens à agir en financiers, prêts à investir dans des projets plutôt que de les subventionner.

The three ages of the European policy for productive investments

“…First independent ex post evaluations estimated that the actual leverage effect was around five, for a total of €376 billion mobilized (against €70 billion approved), as of July 2018 (Griffith-Jones, 2021). The same logic seems confirmed for the 2021–2027 European programming period, with the renewal of the Juncker plan under the name InvestEU (in 2019), as well as continued focus on new financial instruments in the structural funds (Thyrard, 2022).…”

“…Although they experienced a real take-off in the 1990s, such schemes were not entirely new at the EEC/EU level. For instance, the idea of leveraging private money through a calibrated use of public funds was a persisting EIB leitmotiv since the 1960s, before it spread rapidly in the Eurocratic repertoire as a solution to budget tensions in the 1990s (Thyrard, 2022). Then, this rationale underpinned the then-nascent Cohesion Policy, the (aborted) «Growth, Competitiveness, Jobs» investment plan from 1993 (Vignon, 2014) and the intensification of the EIB’s activity with the creation of a European Investment Fund (EIF) in 1994 (Mertens and Thiemann, 2017).…”

The European Investor State: Its characteristics, genesis, and effects

“…Yet, these subsidies have been transformed under the regime of the Investor state, being linked to “project-based” policy tools (Büttner and Leopold 2016) with short-term duration and a need to find co-financing in the context of the attribution of loans. Second, we see a growing displacement of instruments, such as subsidies with financial instruments in fields priorly dominated by the former, such as European structural and investment funds (s. Thyrard 2022). The third difference is the importance given to their direct financial profitability.…”