Behind InvestEU’s Trojan Logic: Public Guarantees, Private Gains, and the Illusion of Climate Action
Behind InvestEU’s Trojan Logic: Public Guarantees, Private Gains, and the Illusion of Climate Action

Behind InvestEU’s Trojan Logic - SOMO

EU industrial policy is being portrayed as key to achieving the net-zero targets. InvestEU, a set of financial instruments that use the EU budget and debt as a revolving guarantee fund for investors, aims to unlock billions in public and private investments for the green transition. However, InvestEU merely creates an illusion of climate action: it effectively outsources the responsibility for, and the pace of, the green transition to investors whose primary imperative remains profit maximisation, without tackling the decarbonisation of capitalism. Climate investments remain marginal and increasingly compete with defence priorities. Moreover, in its efforts to ‘crowding in’ investors, the EU is crowding out democratic oversight and control.