The European Investor State: when public actors act like investors, Interview with Ulrike Lepont and Matthias Thiemann

In the wake of financial, sovereign debt and health crises, public interventions in the European economy have taken on a new level of breadth, marking a reentry in force of the state in economic life that goes beyond the regulatory state. Yet, these interventions do not follow the old Keynesian interventions neither, being shaped through a particular logic of investment that link public and private actors in a particular configuration. By the concept of “European Investor state”, Ulrike Lepont and Matthias Thiemann refer to the redefinition of the role of the EU and its member states in the economy as “investors,” in reference to private investment funds, which the state seeks both to imitate and to enroll. 

In this video, they present a special issue of the journal Competition and Change on “The European Investor State”, that they co-edited.

Interview by Véronique Etienne, January 2024.
Download the transcript of the interview (PDF, 73 ko).

Links to the articles of this issue (Volume 28 Issue 3-4, July 2024, Special Issue: The European Investor State):

• The European Investor State: Its characteristics, genesis, and effects, by Ulrike Lepont and Matthias Thiemann
• The three ages of the European policy for productive investments, by Pierre Alayrac and Antonin Thyrard 
• Public spending and austerity: The two faces of the French Investor State, by Ulrike Lepont 
• Breeding ‘unicorns’: Tracing the rise of the European investor state in the European venture capital market, by Dan Mocanu and Matthias Thiemann 
• The European Investor State has no clothes. Generic promises and local weaknesses of green public subsidies in France, by Antoine Ducastel, Camille Riviere, and Edoardo Ferlazzo
• Between investor state and investment gaps in the just transition in Romania, by Clara Volintiru and Sanda-Elena Nicola 
• Governing public investment in Europe: The politics of off-balance-sheet policymaking, the rise of Eurostat and contrasted regional policies in Belgium, by Damien Piron
• Off-balance-sheet expertise to the rescue: the role of statistical expertise for European Public-Private Partnerships, by Vanessa Endrejat