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Yesterday, President Barroso met Chancellor Merkel for a working dinner in Berlin to talk about further steps on how to enhance growth and stability in Europe. They both agree that beyond immediate actions for growth and stability, a political vision for the future of Europe is needed and that the monetary union should be supported by the creation of an economic union. Therefore they are both in favour of the creation of a banking union to reinforce the supervision of European banks and increase their capacities.
In his statement, President Barroso said: "We in the European Commission believe that to achieve growth we need sound public finances - that is why fiscal consolidation is indispensable. We need competitiveness - that is why structural reforms are indispensable - and we also need some targeted investment. And it is around these lines that we are going to propose some initiatives for growth.
We have to make a distinction between what we can do in the short term and in the medium to longer term. We believe that for the longer term it is very important to give already now some signals to the citizens and to all the investors worldwide that we will do whatever is necessary to ensure the stability of our currency.
That is why we need to speak about the future of our Union trying to complete in fact with an economic union the monetary union. That is why the Commission in this debate will be for a structured and ambitious approach that may include what we can call a banking union; some elements of this banking union will be more integrated financial supervision and also more integrated deposit guarantees. And I think it is important to have this long term vision about more Europe. As Chancellor Merkel just said, this perspective of the future is also important.
So we have to make this distinction between the immediate tasks for growth and the medium term tasks also for growth and stability. We need both. It is impossible to have growth without stability and to have stability without some measures for growth. I believe in this area we need to do things faster and we need to go further, and precisely I come here to discuss these matters with Chancellor Merkel.
And once again I want to thank her because of Germany's commitment to a strong European Union including by the way the vision of a political union. But it is now evident that also for the stability of the Euro we need some concrete measures regarding the Euro area and the European Union in general."