Thank you. Good evening.
Yes, indeed we had a couple of pieces of good news coming from Eurostat. Inflation in the euro area fell further to 2.4% in November, and unemployment has held stable at 6.5%.
But the context remains highly uncertain, and so as the President of the Eurogroup just said, strong coordination of national fiscal policies and a consistent policy mix are essential. This is of course reflected in the process assessing the Draft Budgets of Member States.
Our assessment was anchored in the Council’s fiscal recommendations adopted last July.
And as you remember, our Opinions highlighted varying degrees of compliance of the draft budgetary plans with the first two of our recommendations. Especially, winding down of energy measures and the path of net primary expenditure. And then the third one: it is very positive that all countries plan to preserve nationally financed public investment. Overall, I welcome the fact that the Eurogroup overall concurred with the Commission Opinions, as reflected in the statement that Paschal has described and the Commission fully supports, which has just been published.
We also discussed the euro area recommendations for 2024. I will not repeat these recommendations here, except to recall that they address fiscal policies; investment purchasing power; competitiveness; and the financial sector.
And again, I welcome the broad consensus that emerged in our first discussion around these priorities.
We also had an exchange of views with the Bulgarian finance minister and the governor of the central bank about their country’s plans to join the euro area.
As I had the occasion to underline during my visit to Sofia last week, the Commission strongly supports Bulgaria’s efforts to join our single currency.
The future of Bulgaria lies in the euro area: it is a matter of when, not of if. And we will assess progress towards the criteria when we publish the next convergence report
Finally, we continued our exchanges on the future of the European capital union.
And of course here let me say that political commitment is not enough: this must also be translated into constructive support for the measures when legislative proposals are negotiated. And this was the message that the Commission passed to ministers this evening.
Thank you.