Brussels, 27/06/2016 (Agence Europe) - On Sunday 26 June, two days after the results of the British referendum in which victory was claimed by those in favour of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union, the French and German foreign ministers called for the creation of a permanent Presidency of the Eurogroup in order to deepen Economic and Monetary Union (see EUROPE 11580).
Germany's Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Jean-Marc Ayrault of France take the view that the position of President of the Eurogroup should be a full-time one. They do not go as far as to say that the person who holds it should also be a member of the College of European Commissioners. The current President of the Eurogroup, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, does this job on top of his position as finance minister of the Netherlands. He has rejected the idea of a full-time Presidency of the Eurogroup on a number of occasions.
According to the two ministers, the full-time Eurogroup President would report to a “specific subcommittee of the European Parliament” for the eurozone. In the longer term, a “parliamentary body” made up of members of the European Parliament and the national parliaments would have “full authority on the subject of budgetary and macroeconomic monitoring”, according to a statement by the two men published on the website of the German Foreign Ministry. The President would also control the activities of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which provides the Eurozone countries with conditional support and which would itself be converted into a true “European monetary fund”.
At macroeconomic level, Steinmeier and Ayrault call for increased economic convergence within the eurozone, which would be based on “a balance between obligations and solidarity”. “The countries with a surplus and the countries in deficit will all have to act for greater convergence, as unilateral alignment is politically unachievable”, they acknowledge. In order to support investment, the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), the financial arm of the Juncker investment plan, would be expanded and the Eurozone's own “budgetary capacity” will be set in place from 2018.
A European security pact. The two ministers also propose the creation of a “European security pact”. Externally, this pact would break down into more systematic interventions in the management of crises with a direct impact on the security of the EU, a permanent civilian-military chain of command and operational rapid reaction forces. Internally, the measures recommended concern the creation of a European civil protection body, a European platform for the exchange of experiences in fighting radicalisation and a European platform for intelligence cooperation. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)