Tribune. After several decades where the State had been assigned to stick to a role of guarantor of respect for competition rules and of inflation control by monetary policy alone, the current European recovery plans, by their magnitude, are often interpreted as the mark of a return of the State to the economy. The recourse to budgetary policy of “whatever the cost”, but also to industrial policy via public investments in sectors considered strategic for future growth, is again legitimate to stimulate the economic activity of the country.
This phenomenon is in reality not simply cyclical: it is part of a process initiated since the 2008 crisis, due to the failure of European monetary policy to relaunch growth in the euro zone, as well as the rise international economic patriotism.
However, this re-legitimation of industrial and budgetary policies is far from signaling the return of the post-war Keynesian state. First of all, from the point of view of industrial policy, public investments are designed according to diametrically different objectives and modalities. During the “glorious thirties”, the objective of investment policies was, for the State, to structure entire economic sectors, sometimes directly by nationalizations, sometimes by subsidies which allowed it to influence development choices. companies. It was thus a question of controlling the market, or even, for certain sectors such as energy, of replacing it.
Confidence in the market
On the contrary, current investment policies aim to encourage the development of private actors and the market by determining general objectives – such as ecological transition – but without intervening in the strategies of economic actors. To do this, they rely on financial instruments such as loans, equity investments in the form of risk capital or guarantees that are issued primarily by public investment banks – whose activity has exploded. for a decade.
This funding is granted on the basis of the financial profitability of the projects and the promise of a “return on investment” for the State, but without any requirement for a counterpart in terms of governance. In addition, when the State invests through public investment banks in the capital of companies, the objective is to withdraw as soon as the activity is profitable, so as to reinvest in other emerging activities. promising, on the model of an investment fund. Finally, the State never invests alone, but in co-financing with private actors, which allows it to capitalize on the “leverage effect”, but which also reduces its control capacity.
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