On Friday, 2 July, Slovenian Minister of Finance Andrej Šircelj mentioned that an extraordinary meeting of the ‘Ecofin’ Council would be held on Monday, “26 July”, for the EU Council to adopt the national recovery plans that will not have been definitively approved on Tuesday, 13 July.
Mr Šircelj indicated that they intend to adopt the first “twelve” national recovery plans on 13 July. “I intend to convene another meeting of the ‘Ecofin’ Council some time in July—I think it will be on 26 July”, he added, in order to analyse the other plans and ensure that the majority of the national recovery plans are adopted by the end of the month.
According to him, the European Commission’s assessments will be ready by then, and any “possible reservations” will have been addressed beforehand in the EU Council.
By the end of April, 13 Member States had officially presented their plans: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia, and Spain (see EUROPE 12711/2).
The European Commission recommended the recovery plans for these 13 countries be adopted. On Friday, it did the same for Lithuania’s plan with €2.2 billion in grants only.
More information on the national recovery plans whose analysis has been finalised is available here: https://bit.ly/3gG3k0D.
Stability and Growth Pact. When asked about the revision of the EU’s fiscal rules, Mr Šircelj announced he intended to launch “a general debate” on this reform.
With the [Stability and Growth] Pact frozen until the end of 2022 and the stimulus policy underway, “the EU has plenty of time to do it”, said the minister, who believes that it is only by the end of 2022 that “target values will have to be defined” in order to ensure the medium-term sustainability of public finances. He went on to conclude that, if there is no consensus, they will keep the rules they have today. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion and Camille-Cerise Gessant)