Much Ado About (Almost) Nothing
President Juncker's European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI) has produced an update on its progress to date. The update is a lovely piece of work, with elegant graphics and breakdowns of projects and investments by country and by sector. Really impressive. Kudos to the content management team. But the content - oh dear, the content. The triumph of image over substance. From the EU-wide State of Play document, here is the total amount invested so far - projects and SME financing - and the countries benefiting from this investment; However, exactly how much is being invested in each country, and on what, is buried in country-specific documents. So I've tabulated it here. Obviously, it's incomplete. For about half the countries in this list, there is NO information. Well, this is awkward. Fortunately, help is at hand. A calculator, in fact. The totals show that the EFSI has actually invested more than this, so the remainder is presumably going into cross-c...