The main task of the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the European Union will be to bring discussions with the European Parliament on the reform of the Stability Pact to a successful conclusion by the end of the EU legislative cycle, after the European finance ministers adopted their negotiating position at the end of December (see EUROPE 13318/13).
Negotiations with the European Parliament will focus on the ‘preventive’ arm of the pact. The Council’s position in this area introduces two numerical criteria (‘benchmarks’): one to ensure a reduction in Member States’ excessive public debt (above 60% of GDP), the other to reduce public deficit to a level sufficiently below 3% of GDP, which is the threshold for triggering an excessive deficit procedure.
MEPs are proposing the same numerical criterion for reducing excessive debt as the EU Council (see EUROPE 13311/22, 13312/29). But they have not included a safety margin for public deficits. They also aspire to be treated on an equal footing with the Council in terms of the transmission of information, notably by the Commission.
The European Parliament is only consulted on the ‘corrective’ arm of the pact and the revision of national budgetary frameworks.
The first official negotiations in trilogue should take place after the vote on the European Parliament’s position at the January plenary session, although informal contacts will already have taken place beforehand.
See the Belgian Presidency’s mandates on the ‘preventive’ arm of the Pact: https://aeur.eu/f/a80
See the ‘corrective’ arm: https://aeur.eu/f/a7z
See the national budgetary frameworks: https://aeur.eu/f/a7y
Euro area. Within the Eurogroup and the Ecofin Council, the Member States will be invited to continue the budgetary process of the European Semester with, in particular, the validation of the annual growth review and the confirmation of a restrictive budgetary stance – of up to 0.6% of GDP – at euro area level (see EUROPE 13297/16, 13309/15).
These guidelines will help Member States as they prepare their stability and reform programmes in the spring, ahead of drawing up their draft budget plans for 2025 in the autumn.
With the deactivation of the Stability Pact’s general escape clause at the end of 2023, the European Commission will once again apply the EU’s fiscal rules in their entirety, providing quantitative and qualitative recommendations. In June, inspired by the current reform of the pact, it will recommend the opening of excessive deficit procedures against States whose deficit exceeds 3% of GDP.
According to the EU institution’s autumn economic forecasts (see EUROPE 13293/2), nine countries will report an excessive public deficit (based on official figures for 2023 which Eurostat will present in the spring): Spain (-4.1% of national GDP), France (-4.8%), Belgium (-4.9%), Malta (-5.1%), Italy (-5.3%), Slovakia (-5.7%), Hungary and Poland (both -5.8%) and Romania (-6.3%).
RRF. On economic issues, the Belgian Presidency will be responsible for monitoring the implementation of the revised post-Covid-19 recovery plans, which include REPowerEU chapters designed to accelerate the energy transition and reduce dependence on Russian hydrofluorocarbons.
See the programme of the Belgian Presidency of the EU Council: https://aeur.eu/f/a4i (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)