Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa, speaking at a Committee of the Regions (CoR) meeting on Wednesday 31 January, gave his backing to “a euro zone budgetary capacity with its own resources”.
This budgetary capacity should provide support for investments made in countries carrying out reforms, Costa stated. In this way, national reform programmes, submission of which to the Commission is an important step in the European semester budgetary process, would serve growth and convergence.
He argued that a budgetary capacity for the euro zone would not bring about a Europe of transfers, a concept rejected by Germany, nor replace cohesion policy through budgetary instruments.
The European Commission has called for a eurozone budget line to be included, as part of the post-2020 multiannual framework, within the EU budget that will be adopted by 27 member states (see EUROPE 11920). France has proposed a budget for the eurozone, managed by the 19 members on an inter-governmental basis. Portugal would prefer the Community method rather than the intergovernmental method. “The worst would be not to have anything at all”, he stated.
Former Mayor of Lisbon and CoR member Costa also called for a robust cohesion policy after 2020, in which infra-state levels are fully involved, a cohesion policy that supports regions in need, taking account of their specific requirements, just as with the outermost regions.
Migration. Costa also advocated a European migration policy that shares responsibilities in the management of migration flows among the member states. Responsibility for reception cannot lie solely with the countries of first entry, such as Greece and Italy, and the countries, such as Germany and Sweden, where the migrants would like to go.
The Portuguese prime minister said that his country had offered to take in 10,000 migrants, a figure higher than what was allocated in the 2015 quotas. Only 1,500 people have been relocated, he pointed out. This has been partly due to some of those relocated then leaving the country to be reunited with family elsewhere in Europe. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)