Brussels, 06/11/2001 (Agence Europe) - At the Eurogroup meeting in Brussels on Monday evening attended by the President of the European Central Bank (ECB), Wim Duisenberg, and the ECB Vice-President Christian Noyer, the eurozone Finance Ministers were relatively confident about the economy in the run-up to the Commission's autumn forecasts. The Ministers also discussed the proposed 2002 budget for several Member States (Luxembourg, Belgium, Ireland and Greece) and for the first time, Commissioner Pedro Solbes announced that only five countries (Spain, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Finland and Austria) had respected to the letter the targets they had set themselves for their public deficits for 2001 in their updated Stability and Growth Programmes of December 2000.
Mr Solbes signalled that the Commission would be presenting its autumn economic forecasts as late as possible (ie 21 November) in order to take account of all available elements. He added that as an innovation, the data would be accompanied by an assessment of risks that might impact on GDP growth. He confirmed that the information available to date suggested that European growth would hover around the 1.5% mark in 2001 and was confident about European economic activity picking up in 2002 thanks to changes in savings, the reasonable level of investment and the good oil prices. The German Finance Minster, Hans Eichel, said that the Commission was forecasting growth of 1.7% in 2001 and 1.8% in 2002, but Mr Solbes refused to comment. Mr Eichel signalled that the Commission was expecting Germany's public deficit to be 2.5% in 2001 and 2.6% in 2002. Mr Solbes welcomed the continued fall in inflation which he said would increase the ECB's room for manoeuvre even more. Ministers avoided pressurising Mr Duisenberg into using this room for manoeuvre, however, with only the Portuguese Finance Minster, Guilherme Oliveira Martins, dropping a heavy hint that he would be happy to see the ECB "taken a proactive role in relaunching the European economy".