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Foreign Investment in EU Falls Short

Wed January 21, 2004 12:42 PM ET

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By Lisa Jucca

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Ten years after the European Union liberalized its internal market, foreign investors are increasingly allocating funds outside the 15-nation bloc, a European Commission report said on Wednesday.

Foreign investment flows to and from the EU nearly balanced each other between 1992 and 1996, but from 1997 to 2002 nearly 250 billion euros ($312.9 billion) left the bloc against an inflow of less than 100 billion, the report showed.

"The EU is investing more in the rest of the world than the rest of the world is investing in the EU," the Commission's report on the state of its internal market said.

"Disappointment about the general regulatory environment and the imperfect state of internal market integration may be one of the factors influencing the decision of potential investors." The Commission said part of the decline could be attributed to cyclical factors such as the recent global economic slowdown.

But the EU executive said the warning signal should not be ignored, and called on EU governments to boost efforts to remove remaining cross-border barriers to the free movement of capital, services and goods.

"The best way to prevent further deterioration is to tackle remaining barriers in the functioning of the EU's product and capital markets, reduce the cost of trading across border and get the process of market integration moving again."

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Abolition of the EU's internal frontiers has boosted economic growth by 1.8 percent and created 2.5 million jobs, data from the EU executive showed.

The Commission unveiled a proposal earlier this month to free up cross-border business in services which are not yet liberalized and which represent 50 percent of the EU's output.

But EU governments have been slow to remove national barriers and often delay by years the adoption of EU legislation aimed at further integrating its single market.

EU founder members such as Belgium, France and Germany are the worst when it comes to adopting EU legislation, while states which joined later, such as Denmark, Finland and Portugal, have a good track record, the Commission said.

The accession of 10 new member states this year may give fresh impetus to the building of a fully integrated single market, as trade barriers with the new states will be abolished.

According to the Commission's report future EU members were only exporting to the EU 63 percent of what was seen as their potential for exports to the bloc.

In Poland, the largest of the EU accession states, exports to the EU in 2000 were only 54 percent of what could be expected from a country of its size and population.

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