On the first day of their informal meeting in Tallinn on Friday 15 September, the European finance ministers stressed the vocation of every member of the EU, with the exception of the United Kingdom and Denmark, to adopt the single currency.
The participants also expressed their support for the comments of the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, who unveiled his priorities for the future of Economic and Monetary Union (EU) in his state of the union speech (see EUROPE 11861), before the European Parliament on Wednesday 13 September.
Juncker said that under the treaties, it is the vocation of all member states of the EU, with the exception of the UK and Denmark, to adopt the single currency. However, the aim is not to push the member states into joining the Eurozone, but rather to support the ones that are ready and willing to join, as Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the President of the Eurogroup, and Pierre Moscovici, the European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, stressed. “The Eurozone is open (…). It is necessary to help those countries”, Moscovici said.
Juncker shares this vision. On Friday, the Commission published a declaration stating that its President does not “intend to force countries to join the euro if they are not willing or not able to do so”.
The President of the Eurogroup said that certain countries are working very hard to comply with the criteria to join the single currency, and that the door was logically open to them. In his speech on the state of the union, Juncker proposed creating a euro pre-accession instrument, which received the firm opposition of Austrian Prime Minister Christian Kern (see EUROPE 11862).
On the institutional plank, a key point of Juncker's proposals, the European ministers and Moscovici discussed the possibility of creating a post of European economy and Finance Minister, which would merge the positions of President of the Eurogroup and Commissioner, and would be answerable to the European Parliament.
This idea is Moscovici's hobbyhorse, as he sees it as an opportunity to democratise the Eurozone (see EUROPE 11854). It has the support of French minister Bruno Le Maire, but also of its President, Emmanuel Macron (see EUROPE 11858).
Dijsselbloem, however, voiced reservations on this point, arguing that the debate should initially focus on the vision of the Eurozone, solidarity between member states and competitiveness.
The major European financial policymakers also discussed the question of the vision of the EMU and the major substantial challenges of the moment. At the Eurogroup meeting, the participants mainly referred to the resilience and capacity of the member states to ride out potential economic shocks. Dijsselbloem flagged up the need to reduce the vulnerability of the states, to increase their ability to absorb an economic shock and to find solutions to ensure that economic recovery is faster. All appeared to agree on this need for resilience, which Moscovici linked to economic convergence in the Eurozone.
To achieve this convergence, the 28 ministers and Valdis Dombrovskis, Vice-President of the Commission with responsibility for the euro, discussed the possibility of adapting the EU budget to cover the current needs of the member states more appropriately. Reinforcing the conditionality of the disbursement of money under the European funds for structural reforms in the member states is one idea that was discussed. The ministers call upon the Commission to make a proposal to this effect.
Le Maire also said that very soon after the German elections, Macron would make a speech on the future of Economic and Monetary Union. For its part, the Commission will present a raft of proposals on EMU on 6 December. (Original version in French by Lucas Tripoteau)