Remarks by J.Dijsselbloem following the Eurogroup meeting

06 December 2016

The Eurogroup President gave an account of the issues tackled during the meeting: the draft budgetary plans and Greece.

The economic and budgetary situation in the euro zone as a whole has steadily improved. Growth is forecast in every member state and will continue to strengthen in the coming years. Almost all member states are forecast to respect the treaty reference value of 3%. Debt has also started to come down, although the level of debt remains high, very high in some countries, and sustainability of public finances remains a matter of concern.  

We agreed today that the fiscal stance should strike a balance between economic support and budget sustainability, in line with the requirements of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). We need to be mindful for the need to support the fragile recovery. We agreed that some member states can, if they choose to do so, use their favourable budgetary situation to strengthen their domestic demand and growth potential.  

We also reviewed the individual draft budgetary plans of all member states, based on the Commission opinions. We agreed with the Commission assessment on the three groups of member states:

• In the first group, we see Germany, Estonia, Luxembourg, Slovakia and the Netherlands. They have all submitted draft budgetary plans that are compliant with the pact so discussions on those countries were rather brief.
• In the second group, we agreed that France, Ireland, Latvia, Malta and Austria have submitted draft budgetary plans that are broadly compliant. These member states will be vigilant in their budget execution in the coming year to ensure compliance.
• In the third group, we agreed that Belgium, Italy, Cyprus, Lithuania, Slovenia, Finland, Spain and Portugal have submitted draft budgetary plans that risk non-compliance. We've listened in detail to the commitments made by the colleagues to implement measures to ensure that the their budgets will be compliant with the rules of the Stability and Growth Pact.

Regarding Italy, our colleague, Pier Carlo Padoan, could not attend today's meeting for understandable reasons. After yesterday's referendum we will await the political developments in Italy. I spoke to him this morning and we agreed that, at this juncture, it is difficult for the Italian government to commit now to take additional measures. Therefore the Eurogroup invites Italy to take the necessary steps in the nearby future to ensure that the budget will be compliant with the requirements of the SGP.  

The new governments in Spain and Lithuania will submit updated draft budgetary plans soon and after the Commission has established an opinion we will review them in due course.  

statement

 

We were informed by the institutions on the on-going work to reach a full staff-level agreement between Greece and the institutions. It was clear that more work has to be done. The institutions are prepared and stand ready to return to Athens to work on it. That is the state of play.  

The second part of our discussion was about debt relief, in particular about the short term package. As you remember in May 2016, we reached an agreement on the way forward on debt sustainability. We distinguished short term measures which the ESM, within its mandate, could design and implement, and medium term measures which we are ready to use, if and when necessary, at the end of the programme (the second half of 2018).  [...]

Eurogroup statement on Greece

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