ECOFIN: Vice-President Dombrovskis's opening remarks at the press conference
Thank you Minister Gramegna. Congratulations on your first Ecofin meeting as Presidency Chair.
I welcome the work programme presented by the Luxembourg Presidency, which contains many important priorities, pretty much in line with the Commission's priorities. We look forward to fruitful cooperation in the months ahead.
On a couple of issues that were discussed in today's meeting, first, on Romania. We discussed the situation in Romania as regards the Balance of Payments Programme. It is regrettable that the review of Romania's Balance of Payments programme could not, once again, be concluded.
It is very important that Romania continues to implement the needed reforms and that the country ensures sound fiscal policies.
The Commissions stands ready to assist the Romanian authorities.
We had a good discussion on the Five Presidents' Report, especially as regards the measures that can be taken forward right now.
I am going to work very closely on the follow-up of the report with Commissioners Hill, Moscovici, Thyssen, and Vestager. I also look forward to constructive discussions in the Council.
Several Ministers stressed the importance of fully implementing existing legislation. And I fully agree.
Looking forward, a key priority is to complete the Banking Union.
It is quite clear we need to do more to break the link between the sovereign and banks and avoid any potential spillovers to other countries.
The first jobhas to be for Member States to fully put in place their deposit guarantee schemes, fully transpose the Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive, and quickly ratify the Single Resolution Mechanism, ensuring upfront financing before banking sector contributions can fill it in.
We also need to start immediately on work to overcome the fragility in the current set-up of national deposit guarantee schemes and start working on a privately-funded European Deposit Insurance Scheme.
Ministers also highlighted the importance of deepening of our economic and fiscal unions.
Recent experience has shown us very clearly that respect for commonly-agreed economic and fiscal rules from all Members is of paramount importance. This is about convergence; it's about jobs; it's about investment and growth.
We will work towards bringing new elements, streamlining procedures further to make surveillance of economic policies across the Euro area more effective and to implement the Macro-economic Imbalance Procedure more effectively.
We welcomed the Council's decision today to adopt the Country-Specific Recommendations for Member States.
This year's recommendations are streamlined and more focussed. We have invested lots of time and energy for detailed dialogue with Member States in the European Semester process which we hope will translate into more national ownership of the country-specific recommendations and, correspondingly, better implementation. Now is the time to concentrate on implementation of the country-specific to strengthen Member States' economies.
We also discussed the situation in Greece which proves, once again, the need to strengthen the Economic and Monetary Union. It continues to be high on our agenda in the coming hours and days ahead.
We see that market reactions have been limited beyond Greece. This means that the mechanisms that had been put together in terms of integration and stronger governance to withstand economic and financial crises had given their positive effect.
The Eurozone is now assessed as being more robust to withstand shocks like this.
We welcome yesterday's Euro Summit agreement on how to move forward with a third Greek programme. We are now focussing on exploring possible bridge financing. The Eurogroup has set up a working group, which is continuing its work as we speak, to explore the best option for a bridge financing mechanism to ensure financing until the ESM programme can be decided.
STATEMENT/15/5370
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