欧盟的投资缺口有多大？如何填补它？

March 2025 How large is the investment gap in the EU andhow to close it? Marco Buti,aMarcello Messori,aDebora Revoltellaband Diego Vilaa1 aEuropean University Institute;bEuropean Investment Bank 1 INTRODUCTION President Ursula von der Leyer has dubbed the College of Commissioners for theyears 2024-2029 the "Investment Commission". To answer the call of Mario Draghi’sreport on European competitiveness (Draghi, 2024), the European Commission'sCompetitiveness Compass has laid out a strategy to close the European technologygap vis-à-vis the US and China (European Commission, 2025). Considering that total investment as a percentage of GDP has long been higher inthe EU than in the US, various commentators have argued that the most efficientgoal would be to boost private innovative investment as a replacement for traditionalinvestment. If this goal were to be achieved in the short to medium term, the additionalannual funding estimated in the Draghi Report (€750–800 billion until 2030) wouldbe substantially reduced and the technological transition would be made much easier.In this Policy Insight, we offer evidence that calls this conclusion into question (seealso Buti and Messori, 2024). The Policy Insight is organised as follows. In Section 2, we discuss the investment gapbetween the EU and the US as well as within the EU across typologies of investment,time and country groups. Section 3 asks whether investment in innovative technologiesand in traditional technologies are complements or substitutes. Section 4 provides aconceptual discussion of why complementarity between the two types of investmenttends to dominate in the short to medium term. Section 5 explores the roles offinancial market depth and the composition of public subsidies in boosting innovativeinvestment. Section 6 concludes. 2 PRODUCTIVE INVESTMENT: HOW LARGE ARE THE GAPS? Draghi (2024) underlines that, since 2020, the ratio of investment excluding the realestate sector (what Draghi calls “productive investment”) to GDP has always beenlower in the EU than in the US. Figure 1 shows the dynamics of this ratio for bothduring the initial two decades of the new century, divided in four subperiods: (1) thefirst ten years of the euro, (2) the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), (2) the recovery years,(3) the pandemic, and (4) the post-pandemic period (Buti and Corsetti, 2024). Thefigure shows that, from the early 2000s, European productive investment has recordeda negative gap relative to the US which has widened since the outset of the GFC. A breakdown of total investment across different typologies for the EU and the US isshown in Table 1. Let us first focus on the difference between the intensity of investmentininnovativetechnologies (ICT equipment, research and development, IT softwareand databases, intellectual property products) in the US and the EU during the firstdecade of the euro and the years 2009-2015. In the two subperiods, the difference rosefrom 2.2 to 3.0 percentage points of GDP. In the following years, the gap increasedfurther. While innovative investment ratios increased in both the EU and the US, theacceleration in the latter was much stronger. Conversely, investment inmaturetechnologies (transport equipment, IT hardwareand other machinery, various equipment) remained stable and relatively similar inthe two economies. Hence,prima facie, a substitution effect between investment ininnovative technologies and investment in traditional technologies has not been atwork at the aggregate level in the US or the EU. It is worth noting that the EU is not a homogeneous area. To assess the investmentgaps within the EU, it is important to look at how the member states differ. We assignthe EU countries into four groups: Continental Europe (Belgium, Germany, France,Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Austria); Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Czechia,Hungary, Poland, Estonia, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia and Slovakia); theMediterranean countries (Greece, Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Malta and Portugal); and theNordic countries (Denmark, Finland and Sweden). Table 2 presents the dynamics ofthe different typologies of investment for the four groups. Figures 2 to 4 provide further detail. Figure 2 shows that, in the years 2009 to 2016,investment ratios in real estate and construction suffered strong negative adjustmentsin Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean countries following the housing bubblethat preceded the GFC in these two groups of countries. Adjustments also occurredin Continental Europe and the Nordic countries, albeit at a more moderate pace.Investment in real estate recovered moderately since 2016, with the exception of theNordic countries, where a stabilisation had already begun at the end of 2010 and ledto a stronger recovery since 2013. Trends and cyclical changes in investment in traditional technologies were quitealigned during the 20-year period under review, with the exception of Eastern Europewhich, due to its catching-up process, has