Press Release - Remarks by J.Dijsselbloem following the Eurogroup meeting of 20 February 2017
Good afternoon everyone and sorry to surprise you with such a short Eurogroup. I guess half of your colleagues are out somewhere because they didn't expect us back already. I have a couple of sentences on the euro area economy, but I will let commissioner Pierre Moscovici say more on the basis of the winter forecast. We discussed the ease of doing business in the euro area.
We had an interesting discussion where several colleagues told us what they were doing to improve the business climate in their countries - cutting red tape etc. - and this is all in our work stream on the investment climate and investments in the eurozone. We will continue work on that and come back to it in April.
On the euro area economy, the recovery is clearly on track. There are lots of risks, downward risks also looming outside Europe and outside the euro area. Yet we are entering the fourth consecutive year of economic recovery and the recovery is gradually becoming stronger; real GDP grew steadily at 1.7% last year.
Lots of positive signs coming from different euro area members states; the rate of unemployment is going down in most countries. I'll stop there and let the commissioner say more about that.
Let me come quickly to the topic that probably interests you most today which is Greece.
We have intensified talks in the last week, week and a half, with the institutions and the Greek government, to find enough common ground for the institutions to go back to Athens. The outcome of today is that they will go back to Athens in a very short time. They will work with the Greek authorities on the additional package of structural reforms; looking at the tax system, the pensions system, also labour market regulation. There will be a change in the policy mix, moving away from austerity and putting more emphasis on deep reforms, which has also been a key element for the IMF. So that is I think a good step and we have to realize that there is no agreement, there is no political agreement at this point, as that would be too early. It is a very positive and good step that the institutions have enough confidence and a common agreement to go back to Athen.
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