On Thursday 7 May, the European Commission specified the monitoring it intends to carry out in the event of activation, by a euro area country, of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) credit lines intended to contribute to direct and indirect health expenditure in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.
In a letter signed by the competent Commissioners, Mr Dombrovskis and Mr Gentiloni, the European institution stresses that budgetary monitoring will be limited to checking that the funds allocated have been used to cover the planned expenditure.
In particular, it is confirmed that there will be no ad hoc missions of institutional creditor representatives (‘troika’) to the capitals, but merely regular missions in the framework of the European Semester budget process.
Moreover, the Commission’s budgetary monitoring will not involve additional macroeconomic analyses of the beneficiary Member State or an assessment of its financial sector.
Enhanced budgetary monitoring will cease as soon as the life of the credit lines has elapsed, or earlier if all the funds have already been used up.
The Eurogroup is called upon, on Friday 8 May, to finalise the documentation enabling the activation, on 1 June, of the ESM credit lines (see EUROPE 12481/3).
See Commission letter: https://bit.ly/3ba3EzT (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)