Good afternoon and welcome to this press conference.
First
of all, we discussed in the Eurogroup today the economic situation in
the euro area, on the basis of the recently published Commission winter
forecast. Overall, the economic recovery in the eurozone continues and
is expected to strengthen this year and next. At the same time, there
are increasing downside risks and there is volatility in the markets all
around the world.
The
euro area is structurally in a much better position now than some years
ago. And this is true also for European banks. With Banking Union, we
have developed mechanisms in the euro area to bring stability to the
financial sector and to reduce the sovereign-banking nexus. Capital
buffers have been raised, supervision has been strengthened, and we have
clear and common rules for resolution.
So overall, structurally we are now in a better position and we need to continue a gradual recovery.
To
conclude this point, many of the global risks come from outside the
euro area at the moment and should not be underestimated. We are all
keenly aware of the need to be particularly vigilant in the current
situation. And in this context, we reaffirmed in our discussions the
need to continue the reform agenda to boost the potential growth in our
countries and continue to follow a growth-friendly fiscal path and fully
abide to the common rules and frameworks of the Banking Union.
Secondly,
we exchanged views on the quality of public expenditure in the euro
area. An important topic from the point of view of fiscal sustainability
and the provision of an adequate level of social services and public
goods. Ultimately, it is about delivering value for money for our
citizens. This is critical also because currently several member states
have limited or no fiscal space. So spending wisely is very important.
The Commission had prepared the discussion and kicked it off to show us
where we can spend better and how it can be done, how can we learn from
each other.
Enhancing
the efficiency and the effectiveness of our public spending is also
important for the growth potential of the euro area. We are going to
zoom in on this issue on a number of themes on specific spending areas
in more detail in the coming months. In particular, we are going to look
closer at the efficiency and effectiveness of our public spending on
investments, healthcare and ageing.
We
discussed a couple of countries as we always do. This time we discussed
Portugal from two angles. The institutions reported back to us on the
main findings of the third post-programme surveillance mission and we
discussed the Commission's assessment of the Portuguese draft budgetary
plan.
On
the PPS mission, the institutions informed us that the Portuguese
recovery has been underway for three years and the unemployment rate is
close to pre-crisis levels. However, the economic recovery continues to
be held back by macroeconomic imbalances and rigidities in labour and
product markets. And that underlines the importance of continuing of the
reform agenda.
On
the DBP, we have issued a statement: As you know, the DBP submitted on
22 January showed, according to the Commission, a significant deviation
from European fiscal rules. And then the Commission and Portugal entered
into a process of fruitful and intense negotiations. The Portuguese
authorities submitted additional measures, which help to avoid a
significant deviation.
We
agree with the Commission's assessment that there still remains at risk
of non-compliance with the requirements of the SGP. And therefore and
on the basis of tonight's discussions, we welcomed the commitments of
the Portuguese authorities to prepare upfront, as of now, additional
measures to be implemented when needed to ensure that the 2016 budget
will be compliant with the SGP.
And
we will return to the Portuguese budget and maybe also to other budgets
on the basis of the spring forecast in our May meeting.
We
then moved to Greece. We discussed the state of play of the first
review of the ESM programme, following the visit of mission chiefs to
Athens last week. This important review deals with the key fiscal and
structural measures. We were informed that there is good cooperation, a
lot of ground has been covered, progress achieved on important issues,
but further work is still needed in a number of areas before a
staff-level agreement can be reached.
We
called on both the Greek authorities and the institutions to pursue the
discussions on the review further, in particular on items such as
pension reform, the fiscal issues and the privatisation fund, with a
view to reaching that staff-level agreement.
Finally,
we discussed ways in which transparency of Eurogroup meetings could be
improved, to answer to public interest and to bring more consistency to
the level of information that reaches our citizens and our parliaments
in different member states. I consider this of prime importance for the
legitimacy of our work.
We
agreed to publish Eurogroup agendas in a more detailed, annotated
format, and to publish summing-up letters recapitulating the main
conclusions from Eurogroup meetings.
There
is also general support in principle to publish documents as much as
possible and we have asked the EWG to further fine-tune the practical
implementation of that part of the proposals.
That's all from me for the moment.
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