On Tuesday 29 November, the President of the Eurogroup, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, delivered a fairly scathing critique of the Commission's initiative to call for the aggregated budgetary trajectory of the Eurozone to be slightly geared towards increasing expenditure in 2017, by 0.5% of GDP, or a stimulus in the region of €50 billion (EUROPE 11669).
Speaking at a hearing before the committee on economic and monetary affairs of the European Parliament on Tuesday, Dijsselbloem said that between "the recommendation on fiscal expansion and upholding the rules on the fiscal trajectory that come from the (stability) pact, there is some tension". "The first responsibility of the Commission is to uphold the pact", he added. In certain countries, it would be unwise to stimulate more, he went on to explain.
"I know from experience how important it is to preserve the credibility of the pact", he said, adding that it was easy to give into the temptation of relaxing efforts during periods of calm, only to conclude, in harder times, that the rules should have been taken more seriously.
This is the first time that the Commission has recommended a budgetary policy slightly geared towards increasing expenditure, the Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Pierre Moscovici had earlier commented, expressing the view that by making recommendations at the level of the Nineteen, the European institution was behaving like a Eurozone finance minister.
"The Eurozone doesn't have one finance minister. It has 19", Dijsselbloem responded, when asked to comment on this statement by his compatriot Ester de Lange (EPP). (Original version in French by Élodie Lamer)