Eurogroup President Mário Centeno referred to an “emerging consensus” among euro area Finance Ministers on the need, in times of economic downturn after six consecutive years of growth, to “not make the same mistakes again”.
“We should not revert to austerity that makes it worse”, he said on Monday 18 November in an economic dialogue with the European Parliament's Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs.
He called for “preventive” and “differentiated” budgetary action by Member States, and even, where possible, “more accommodative” budgetary policies to support growth and increase investment in research and development and sustainable infrastructure.
This is the message directed to countries like Germany, which has the budgetary margins to support economic activity.
The President of the Eurogroup took stock of ongoing work to deepen the Economic and Monetary Union, such as the creation, from 2021, of a fiscal capacity (BICC) for the euro area and the reform of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which should lead to decisions at the December Eurozone Summit (see EUROPE 12366/6).
Jonás Fernández (S&D, Spain) questioned the need to draw up an intergovernmental agreement (IGA) to provide more funding for the future budget for the euro area. This agreement will make it possible to set the overall size of the budget, but will not prevent democratic control over how the funds will be spent, the Portuguese Minister said.
José Gusmão (GUE/NGL, Portugal) criticized the future weakening of European cohesion policy without BICC being able to compensate for this loss. But, according to Mr Centeno, referring to statements by the former President of the ECB, Mario Draghi, a budget was never initially created to perform a stabilisation function.
The objective of the fiscal capacity for the euro area will be to “promote the competitiveness and convergence of our economies” and “respond to the priorities identified in the country-by-country recommendations” of the European Commission, he recalled.
To Derk Jan Eppink (ECR, the Netherlands), who fears a permanent “Transfer Union” where “it is always the same people who have to pay and always the same people who receive”, Mr Centeno replied that the deepening of Economic and Monetary Union aims to increase cohesion within the euro area through an integration that suits all Member States. And in particular, in a monetary environment with very low interest rates, to encourage the generation of colossal private savings - he mentioned billions of billions of euros - to be reinvested in the economy in a secure way.
On the expected unblocking of work at the political level leading to the establishment of a European Deposit Insurance Scheme (EDIS), the Portuguese Minister merely noted a change in attitude around the Ministerial size. We are closer to a new “roadmap”, he said.
ECB. Several MEPs, including Luis Garicano (Renew Europe, Spain), Sven Giegold (Greens/EFA, Germany) and Luisa Porritt (Renew Europe, United Kingdom), criticized the strong imbalance in the composition of the ECB's Executive Board, where only the President, Christine Lagarde, is a woman. Germany’s Isabel Schnabel will join the Board at the beginning of 2020.
I “fully” understand the European Parliament's concerns about the gender imbalance in the allocation of senior European posts, said Mr Centeno, who is ready to raise the issue for every new Eurogroup appointment. But, at Parliament's request that at each procedure the names of two candidates - a man and a woman - be put forward, he warned against any “improvisation”. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)