On Thursday 12 July, the finance ministers of the Eurozone held an exchange of views on the conclusions of the Eurozone summit of 29 June (see EUROPE 12052) and confirmed that they will present proposals on the future of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in December.
“We will be more focused in our discussions in each of the upcoming Eurogroups”, said Mario Centeno, the President of the Eurogroup, referring to a package of decisions for December.
The aim will be to define new competences for and to fine-tune the governance of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the permanent bailout fund of the Eurozone, but still within an intergovernmental system.
In particular, the ESM should play a role of common backstop to the Single Resolution Fund (SRF), the financial arm of Banking Union (see EUROPE 12061). The following are still to be finalised: - the level of the line of credit (between €50 and €60 billion); - the date for the reduction of financial risks to enter into force (no later than 2024); - the decision-making process that will allow prompt action in the event of emergency, in full respect of the prerogatives of the national parliaments.
The Eurogroup will present a roadmap to relaunch political negotiations on the European Deposit Insurance Scheme (EDIS), the third plank of Banking Union.
It will also seek to make progress on the creation of the Eurozone's own fiscal capacity. On the last point, differences of assessment observed at the Eurozone summit persist concerning both the nature and legal framework of this fiscal capacity.
Bruno Le Maire told a press conference that all attendees of this meeting had agreed to “work on all the topics that are on the table”, including the budgetary instruments. Readers may recall that a group of states led by the Netherlands is staunchly opposed to the idea of a stabilisation function. European Commission (see EUROPE 12031) and France and Germany (see EUROPE 12044), which are in favour of this idea, clash over the architecture of a budgetary instrument of this kind. (Original version in French by Lucas Tripoteau)