Spiegel: Schäuble's no to Juncker's proposal to use ESM for economic growth

German government believes that a misuse of funds would weaken significantly the ability of EU to defend against speculators, if a new euro crisis broke up

Economic crisis in Europe cannot be addressed without economic growth. This belief led President of European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker to express the view that more resources should be found in order to finance public investment programs, as Spiegel reports.

According to Juncker, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which has still 450 billion euros, will be able to fund investment programs and about 100 billion euros could be used as a guarantee for European Investment Bank (EIB) loans.

As Spiegel mentions, the President of EIB, Werner Hoyer, and the President of ESM, Klaus Regling, support Juncker’s initiative. However, they did not manage to persuade German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble on this issue.

German government believes that a misuse of funds would weaken significantly the ability of EU to defend against speculators, if a new euro crisis broke up. However, attempting to avoid a clash with their partners and the President of European Commission, Angela Merkel and Wolfgang Schäuble proposed another plan according to which member states would provide European Investment Bank with additional capitals. This plan, though, costs more money, but as they argue will not jeopardise credibility.