Eurogroup meeting of 26 January 2015: Remarks by Jeroen Dijsselbloem
Good evening and welcome to this press conference. This was our first Eurogroup of the New Year and already a lot has happened. Of course we discussed the latest news, which was the outcome of last nights Greek elections and we were informed about last week’s decision by the ECB. But we had more on our agenda. Today we discussed a wide range of topics: Lithuania’s euro changeover, the Commission’s flexibility paper with a lot of focus on reforms, the economic situation in the euro area.
We are first going to Greece. Let me first of all say, from this podium, that we of course congratulate the party that won the Greek elections and have now formed a Greek government and that we wish them, of course, success in their work and we look forward to working with them, the way we worked with the previous Greek government. We will support them in their quest for economic recovery of Greece. We are glad that their ambition is to realise this within the Eurozone and that is exactly our ambition too. I am sure you will have a lot of questions of what will now happen, the current programme, the future etc, but there is very little I can say about it at this moment, for the simple reason that the new Greek government has yet to take office, get started. It is too early to say what their intentions, ambitions in the short term regarding programmes etc. So it is really hard for me to respond to that. I think we will need a little bit of patience and we also discussed this in the Eurogroup that we must allow the new Greek government to take their positions and give their points of view on how to move forward. Both in finalising the pending review and any other further suppport from the Eurozone to Greece. On awaiting that outcome, we have some time to come to this in our next Eurogroup meeting in February. So, this all is very disappointing if this is all I can say on Greece.
We talked quite briefly on the smooth changeover process of Lithuania entering the Eurozone. We formally welcomed Finance Minister Rimantas Šadžius as a full Member of the Eurogroup. He has been already attending our meetings since September 2014 as an observer. Introducing the Euro is also a well-deserved achievement for Lithuania, after an impressive convergence process and remarkable re-emergence from the financial crisis.
On the economic situation in the Euro area, we were joined today on this issue also by the IMF, who shared with us their current assessment on where the Euro area economy stands. And the ECB informed us of last week’s decision by the Governing Council. We discussed the economic situation and the required policy priorities, which you know very simply is about growth and jobs. There is no two ways about it. To enhance our economy’s growth potential and this requires decisive action on the part of the Member States through growth-friendly fiscal consolidation, respecting the SGP, investment and importantly, growth-enhancing structural reforms. Action in these areas will make the ECB’s accommodative monetary policy more effective.
In this context we also had a short discussion on the governance of the Euro area, to be more precise on how to get reforms done. We prepared the input for the February European Council, which will discuss the state of play of the EMU.
At at their informal meeting on 12 February, HoSoG will exchange views on the issue on the basis of an analytical note, as agreed at the December EU Council Member States will be closely involved in the preparatory work. Our Eurogroup discussion today is part of this process. Following the feedback received from HoSoG on 12 February, work will continue so that the ‘Four Presidents’ can report back to the June European Council.
Finally we had a specific discussion on fiscal surveillance issues.
First of all, we covered Latvia. As you may remember in December when we discussed draft budgetary plan, a new government was only very recently in place in Latvia and we did not take into consideration or the Commission did not have the time to give an opinion on the updated budgetary plan of the new government. This has now been done. The Commission has analysed this and finds that it is compliant with the requirements of the Stability and Growth Pact. We have issued a statement which welcomes this good news.
Second, we discussed the follow-up to Draft Budgetary Plans more generally. In December Statement we noted the risk of non-compliance for seven Member States. Today we briefly discussed with the Commission how to proceed with the follow-up. The Commission will be reporting to us on their updated assessment by end-February. But I leave this to Pierre to say something on this procedure. But it will back on our agenda on March 9.
Finally, on fiscal issues, we had a first exchange of views on the Commission’s Communication on flexibility in the Stability and Growth Pact. The Communication puts emphasis on responding to the economic cycle, rewarding investment and promoting structural reforms, which maintaining the rules of the Pact These broad objectives are fully shared across the Eurogroup. Further discussions will now continue at a technical level to see how to apply these principles in practice, starting in March. I think that is all from me in this introduction.
