Brussels, 29/10/2014 (Agence Europe) - The decision not to return a preliminary unfavourable opinion on five countries of the eurozone, including France and Italy, is absolutely without prejudice to the final decision to be taken in the second half of November, the European Commission warned on Wednesday 29 October.
“The procedure we have started for certain countries of the eurozone following their presentation, in mid-October, of their draft budgets for 2015 aimed to highlight a number of initial concerns” or “simply to request further information”, said the outgoing commissioner in charge of the euro, Jyrki Katainen. eI informed the college that, after taking into account the information I was given, I was unable to identify serious breaches of the fiscal rules”, he added.
However, the commissioner went on to say that this decision not to take action at this time does not mean that the states in question have fully complied with their budgetary obligations under the stability and growth pact and that “this is by no means prejudges the final assessment” to be carried out by the Commission. Katainen also stressed that two weeks was not enough for his services to carry out a full assessment of the draft national budgets.
On Wednesday 22 October, the Commission asked Austria, France, Italy, Malta and Slovenia for additional information on their draft budgets for 2015. France and Italy, both of which are particularly in the hot seat, have since publicly announced additional measures to increase their structural budgetary efforts - in other words without the effects of an unfavourable economic situation - to a higher level, in line with the commitments made at European level (see EUROPE 11185). “In all cases, the member states have responded constructively”, an attitude we welcome, said Katainen.
Sending out a warning to the national governments which may feel they are completely out of the woods, the outgoing commissioner stressed that the dossier had now been transferred to the new Juncker Commission, which is to take up its duties in early November. According to the former Finnish prime minister, “this does not rule out the possibility that the European Commission will have to take further steps in the framework of the excessive deficit procedure for certain countries”, in the wake of the autumn economic forecasts and the detailed analysis of the budgetary documents submitted. These decisions will be taken collegially on the basis of proposals made jointly by the future commissioners for economic affairs, Pierre Moscovici of France, and for the euro, Valdis Dombrovskis.
Katainen declined to be drawn on specific cases. With reference to France, however, he said that he did not wish to qualify the additional measures announced by Paris, which partly stem from a windfall effect (reducing the servicing of public debt, rebate on the contribution to the EU budget). He went no further than to observe that the French authorities had proposed to increase the structural effort from 0.2% to 0.5%, an announcement which constitutes “a significant improvement”. He went on to stress his determination to support the continuation of structural reforms, which he described as the main source of growth in this country.
Recomeçar. With the procedure underway, the outgoing Commission did not want to end on bad terms by going on the warpath just as it is about to take its final bow. Preferring to conclude his last-ever press conference by reading the poem Recomeçar by Miguel Torga, the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Durão Barroso, stressed that the Commission had “stuck scrupulously to the rules”. He said that he was certain that the Juncker Commission, which will be led by a former president of the Eurogroup, would do likewise, otherwise there would be a “fundamental credibility problem for the European Union”. (MB)