Green investments to be part of EU budget rules review

The possibility of exempting "green" investments from EU deficit  calculations will form part of discussions when EU budget rules are  revised, European Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis said on  Saturday.

The idea to exempt investments that would help prevent climate change  is to support the bloc's ambition to cut net CO2 emissions to zero by  2050, reports Reuters.

The exemption of investments in such projects has been nicknamed by EU officials as the "golden rule.""Obviously, the question of a golden rule, in one way or another,  will be part of the discussion of the EU fiscal framework," Dombrovskis  told reporters after the second day of EU finance ministers' talks in  the Slovenian town of Brdo.

During the two-day summit, finance ministers from the bloc have  debated how to amend budget rules to better fit changed economic  realities once EU budget rules, now suspended until the end of 2022, are  reinstated from 2023.

Some, like French Finance Minister Bruno le Maire said the green  exemption idea was worth discussing because it would help generate the  very large funds needed to transform their economies over the coming  years.

Others, like Austrian Finance Minister Gernot Bluemel, expressed  concern over how such a rule could be made to work in practice, given  the difficulty in precisely defining what constitutes "green"  investment.

"From an economic, scientific point of view, that can make sense," he  said. "But I have repeatedly seen in the past that such exceptions in  budgeting practice ... is often used as an excuse when the political  will is lacking to obey the rules," he said.