06 October 2020

Remarks by Executive Vice-President Dombrovskis at the ECOFIN press conference

With today's backing by Ministers of the proposal for a Recovery and Resilience Facility, we are one step closer to adopting this very important piece of legislation... comments on digital finance and CMU.

The Coronavirus continues to affect all our lives and our economies, with many cities and regions again stepping up restrictions. Clearly, we are not out of the woods. And this is why I am delighted that we have taken a big step forward today in supporting EU countries at this difficult time. 

I very much welcome the level of ambition shown by Ministers, who today strongly supported the two key targets to make Europe greener and more digital: the 37% target for climate-mainstreaming and at least 20% for digitalisation.

We now look forward to the European Parliament also coming with its negotiating position so that negotiations – so-called trilogues – can start as soon as possible.

Time is of the essence. We want to make this new Facility operational quickly so that it can support the recovery and Member States can move forward with their reforms and investments. 

To facilitate the policy coordination and the implementation of reforms and investment under the Facility, we are also temporarily adjusting the European Semester cycle for next year.

The Semester remains the key instrument to align economic and employment policies. Member States' Recovery and Resilience Plans should address country specific challenges. In that context, our 2019 and 2020 Country-Specific Recommendations remain very relevant.

We are engaging in close dialogues with Member States, while they work on their Recovery and Resilience Plans.  And we will do so more intensely in the next weeks, as Member States will be able to submit these plans informally as of 15 October.

These dialogues will focus on how Member States propose to address the country-specific challenges identified in the European Semester, and how they plan to align their  national priorities with European goals - notably for those green and digital projects where coordination and scale can be very important.

Let me now say a few words on our discussions on digital finance. Last month, the Commission proposed a digital finance strategy and a strategy for modern and safe retail payments. We also proposed legislation on crypto-assets and digital operational resilience. Our aim is to make EU rules fit for the digital age - promoting financial innovation while mitigating risks.

The future is clearly digital – for example, we saw a sharp take-up of online payments during the lockdown. Digital finance has real strategic importance: it can help modernise the European economy across sectors and turn Europe into a global digital player.

We want to make it easier  for consumers and businesses to pay across borders in the EU, and to make euro payments between the EU and other jurisdictions.  This is important to reduce our dependency on global players, such as non-EU international card schemes and Big Techs.

We support efforts to develop pan-European payment systems, such as the European Payments Initiative (EPI).

I trust that we will take this work forward together so that Europe can be at the cutting edge of technological innovation and so help our recovery.

I also welcome today's discussions on the Capital Markets Union. We recently presented our Action Plan, setting out the way forward.

We need the CMU for the recovery. It can create more financing opportunities to help start-ups and small businesses, and to help larger companies to thrive.

The CMU can also help to generate the massive investment we need for the green and digital transitions.

But one thing is clear: we will need strong political support from Member States.

That also commitment to tackling the most difficult and long-standing barriers to integrated capital markets. These are in areas such withholding taxes, insolvency, and supervision.

Not easy topics, but we must make headway now if we want to create a genuine European capital market and create a more robust recovery.

European Commission

© European Commission