Importance of public investment for economic growth in the European Union
The economy of the European Union has been recovering steadily from the recent financial crisis, with economic growth returned to all EU member states. Unemployment is at its lowest in nine years, employment rates are growing and longterm and youth unemployment has been declining. Public finances have improved significantly and investment is slowly recovering (European Commission, 2017a:1). Nevertheless, there is some remaining slack in the labour market and, together with slow productivity growth, it obstructs wage dynamics and dampens inflation (European Commission, 2017b:1). Despite the return of more favourable financing conditions, investment has not reached its pre-crisis level and there is still significant potential remaining; the same goes for unemployment. Some of the EU policy initiatives supporting national and EU public investment have already shown concrete and positive results in terms of increase in investment projects, as well as in terms of the participation of private capital in financial structures also supported by public money. It is important to keep the momentum going and mostly to give enough technical support to every member state to create and manage its own strong project pipeline. The latter together with the supportive regulatory environment remains the key, since the success of any, including of course public, investment depends on the success of the projects it supports.