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Introduction
As of 2014, telling data have been made very
public about what is happening in the European
Union’s investment policy as a whole –a policy
whose fundamental effort, in political and me-
dia terms, is clearly centred around the
“Investment Plan for Europe”, commonly known
as the “Juncker Plan”. The fact that the intro-
duction of this plan practically coincided with
the long-term monetary expansion programmes
promoted by the European Central Bank leads
us to figures that we can begin by describing as
“surprising”, to say the least (
Chart 1
).
The extraordinary contrast between the fig-
ures from what we consider to be the European
Union’s “great effort” to boost productive in-
vestment –the Juncker Plan– and the long-term
resources delivered to the banking system over
the last few years is, at first glance, striking.
Based on the figures from the chart above, we
find that the resources allocated to monetary
expansion have been 136.2 times higher than
those allocated to the Juncker Plan
1
.
If we prefer, we can compare these figures
with the Eurozone’s Gross Domestic Product in
2014 (19 States) (
Table 1
).
On the basis of that information, certain play-
ers from Europe’s productive economy have be-
gun to ask themselves questions. The first of them
is to what extent can we say that policy to boost
the real economy and the policy of monetary
1
At its meeting on March 10
th
, 2016 the Governing Coun-
cil of the ECB took the following monetary policy decisions
regarding the continuity (and reinforcement) of the pro-
grams of monetary expansion. Among them: “The monthly
purchases under the asset purchase programme will be ex-
panded to
€
80 billion starting in April. […] Investment
grade euro-denominated bonds issued by non-bank corpo-
rations established in the euro area will be included in the
list of assets that are eligible for regular purchases. […] A
new series of four targeted longer-term refinancing opera-
tions (TLTRO II), each with a maturity of four years, will be
launched, starting in June 2016. Borrowing conditions in
these operations can be as low as the interest rate on the
deposit facility”.
Monetary policy and the
productive economy
in the Eurozone
Adrian Zelaia and Carlos Trias Pintó