07 November 2022

Remarks by Paschal Donohoe following the Eurogroup meeting of 7 November 2022

The Commission forecasted growth of 2.7% for 2023 before Russia began its awful war on Ukraine. The latest figure for growth for the euro area in October is now 0.5%. We will get further details on growth expectations from the Commission when they publish their forecast at the end of the week.

We've just completed a good meeting of the Eurogroup. The meeting began by welcoming the new Italian finance minister, Giancarlo Giorgetti. I had the pleasure of meeting him before our meeting began. In the Eurogroup meeting, the new minister made a presentation regarding the policy priorities of the new government of Italy. We also welcomed the new finance minister of Estonia, Annely Akkermann, to our meeting.

We discussed the international meetings that took place in Washington last month and the need to foster and preserve international cooperation from those who would seek to undermine it.

We began our meeting with a focus on the economic situation. Everyone has known for some time that the economy within the euro area is slowing. The Commission forecasted growth of 2.7% for 2023 before Russia began its awful war on Ukraine. The latest figure for growth for the euro area in October is now 0.5%. We will get further details on growth expectations from the Commission when they publish their forecast at the end of the week.

Despite this change, it is worth emphasising just how resilient other aspects of the euro area have become, especially the labour market within the euro area. Despite the unprecedented magnitude of the shocks that are hitting us, the euro area economy expanded strongly in the first half of the year and even in the third quarter, the out-turn was stronger than many had expected.

This also afforded an opportunity for the ECB, represented by Fabio Panetta, to give context on the latest monetary policy decisions made by the ECB and the importance of maintaining consistent policies to bring down inflation.

Obviously, budgetary policies have a critical role to play here. Through the work of the Commission, we took stock of the measures and analysed their impact as these measures have been rolled out to keep our citizens warm over winter. According to estimates by the Commission, euro area governments have so far collectively spent about 1,25% of EU GDP on energy support for the year, so about €200 billion.

Ministers noticed the challenges of the significant supports in effectively managing the trade-off between reducing inflation, while also supporting both vulnerable households and also the euro area's international competitiveness. We also noted that a key issue for the overall policy mix and for the budget outlook for next year is what happens if measures are extended into spring and beyond.

So this will be a very important juncture for budgetary policy for the coming period. And we've begun the process of exchanging views on those decisions now. We're going to return to this issue next month when we will discuss budgetary plans for 2023. This discussion will be an opportunity to further strengthening the coordination of policies to achieve the objectives of affordability for countries, the proper targeting of our supports, and also incentivising the energy transition. That discussion will build on the progress that we made. We agreed a statement on these issues in our October Eurogroup meeting.

After this part of the meeting, together with our colleagues from Croatia and Bulgaria, we invited Andrea Enria, the chair of the Supervisory Board of the ECB, and Elke König, the chair of the Single Resolution Board, for their regular exchange of views with ministers. This discussion today showed again the resilience in our banking sector that became an asset for our economies.

Nonetheless, there are some really important challenges ahead. For years, our banks operated in a low interest rate, low inflation environment, and this is now changing at a pace not many would have predicted.

The wider picture of inflation, economic disruption and geopolitical turmoil will also impact our banks and the financial sector more broadly. So we need to maintain sound policies and continue our careful monitoring.

On to any other business, the Bulgarian minister briefly updated us on where the national authorities currently stand in terms of euro area adoption commitments and technical preparations.

One last issue that I want to refer to is the upcoming end of my term as President of the Eurogroup. It expires in the middle of next January and thus the need for the Eurogroup to elect a President for the next term of two and a half years.

In our meeting today, we agreed that this election will be held at the next Eurogroup meeting on the 5th of December. Ministers willing to stand for election were invited to inform of their intention by the 24th of November.

In anticipation of any questions regarding my own intentions. I feel privileged to have served as President of the Eurogroup since July of 2020. I've worked very closely with my finance ministers and colleagues, on a huge variety of matters, and I'm very privileged to have received the support of the Irish government to put my name forward.

Council

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