07 December 2015

European Council: Remarks by Dijsselbloem following the Eurogroup meeting

Eurogroup's president Dijsselbloem said the highlights of the meeting had been: Greece, Ireland, Portugal, the SSM and the agreement reached on the constituency for the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

Let me first make a couple of remarks on Greece, which was one of the countries discussed today. After successful implementation of the first set of milestones last month, today we took stock of the implementation of the second set of milestones. [...] The objective is to settle this by mid-December [...].  

Recapitalisation of the four significant banks is almost finalised. We expect the last disbursement to be made tomorrow after approval of the ESM Board of Directors. Overall, a good success with significant involvement from private investors. The exercise will cost the programme less than €5½ bn, well below, as you know, initial estimates.  

Secondly, we welcomed Danièle Nouy, the SSM chair. She joined us for one of our regular exchanges of views as part of what's called the accountability arrangements for the SSM. She informed us on the execution of the supervisory work by the SSM, in particular the recent Comprehensive Assessments and the Supervisory Review and Evaluation Process (SREP), as well as on the SSM's key policy challenges and priorities going forward.  

We had a thematic discussion on pensions and pension reforms, which are central to fiscal sustainability in the euro area. Top of the agenda in many member states that have already enacted considerable pension reforms. But pension expenditure is still one of the main challenges for long-term sustainability. Alongside addressing pension expenditures, we need a range of policies to ensure that retirement incomes remain sufficient in the future. There is also a strong link, which was mentioned by a number of colleagues, to reforms on the issue of long-term care, the costs of care, which are also linked to the aging of our populations. And also reforms of the labour market, making sure that also all employees can still participate in the labour market. [...] So we will come back to those issues in a second round next year.  

As I've said, we also discussed some country issues. A post-programme surveillance of Ireland took place in November 2015. [...] Overall an impressive performance by Ireland.  

We also discussed Portugal, in a different way. We welcomed the new Portuguese finance minister, Mário Centeno, to the Eurogroup, and his state secretary Ricardo Mourinho Félix. The minister outlined the new government's economic policy priorities and has assured us that he will come with a draft budgetary plan as soon as possible, probably at the beginning of the January 2016, for us to be able to discuss that with the Commission's opinion in our February meeting. This is how I see it in the planning.  

Finally one remark: we've come to an agreement on the constituency for the AIIB, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. [...]

Full statement

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