Brussels, 16/10/2000 (Agence Europe) - As expected, the "Eurogroup" met Monday evening, chaired by the French Minister of the Economy and Finance, Laurent Fabius. Ministers exchanged views on developments in the oil crisis and undertook a multilateral monitoring exercise on economic developments in the States participating in the single currency, from essentially the point of view of budgetary consolidation and structural reforms. This, essentially, on the basis of national budgets for 2001, already communicated by a large majority of Member States. Last week, Commissioner Solbes had regretted a certain amount of lack of ambition in the budgets of France and Italy in relation to the goal of budgetary balance and debt reduction. But this was but a preliminary reaction. Monday evening's discussions should allow them to refine evaluations.
Tuesday morning, the EcoFin Council will be meeting, essentially to deal with tax issues and the economic aspects of social and employment questions, and, in the afternoon, there will be the joint EcoFin/Justice session (see EUROPE of 14 October, pp.8 and 9), and previous page).