Ensuring the Accountability of the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI)

The European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI) was established by a EU regulation in 2015. With an investment potential of up to €315bn until 2018, it is a major initiative to trigger growth within the EU’s economy outside the formal EU budget. This paper evaluates the democratic quality of the legal and political decisions taken to put the EFSI into effect, the implications for the EU and for its budget, which totals around €160bn annually, of such a large parallel fund, and the mechanisms for accountability of the EFSI that have been established. Due to the political difficulties in expanding the EU budget, the chapter concludes that the creation of new funds and instruments outside the EU’s formal budget creates new challenges for democratic accountability.