Remarks by Commissioner Gentiloni at the Eurogroup press conference - Main contents

Good evening.

I will not to add much to what Mario has said on the exchange of views that we had on the Banking Union.

A lot of measures have already been taken at national level to mitigate the impact of the crisis and guarantee liquidity. The overall measures taken by Member States to guarantee liquidity are now around €2.6 trillion. This gives us an idea of the effort that was made in these weeks.

I want to welcome in particular the agreement reached yesterday between the European Parliament and the Council on the bank recovery package that the Commission proposed at the end of April. It was a very quick approval.

Of course, our aim is to encourage banks to make full use of the flexibility in the EU's prudential and accounting framework, so that they can fully support citizens and companies during this crisis by providing funding. This is our goal, to get our economies moving again.

Concerning Greece, the Commission presented the latest enhanced surveillance report, which recognises that the Greek authorities have adjusted their policy priorities in a responsible way to react to the pandemic.

The Greek authorities responded to the pandemic strongly. Nevertheless, the economic consequences for an economy with such a strong role for tourism, shipments and the transport sector will be important. The reaction to the pandemic was also coherent with a continued effort to sustain the reforms.

Reforms have continued in spite of some delays linked to the containment measures and the need to focus on the immediate crisis response.

For this reason, I welcome the agreement today to proceed with the release of the next tranche of debt measures for Greece, worth €748 million. This will help to sustain confidence at this crucial time.

I also presented our post-programme surveillance reports for Cyprus and Spain.

Finally, just a few words to on our discussion at 27 on the economic situation and the recovery plan.

All ministers stressed the importance of the coordination of national measures. In these challenging times, coordination and monitoring will be key. The economy is obviously in a deep recession. Eurostat published the GDP and employment figures confirming our Spring Forecast. They are very negative and show the sharpest decline since 1995 when our recording of this data began.

This data also made clear the different impacts on different countries. Some countries, like Ireland, Bulgaria, Romania and Sweden still recorded growth in the first quarter. Other countries, like France, Italy, Spain and Slovakia, saw GDP fall by more than 5% in the first quarter. The second quarter numbers are set to be significantly worse. According to our Spring Forecast, it is -12% and again with an uneven situation in different countries. That is why it is so important that the Next Generation EU proposal seeks to avoid distortions in the single market and divergences, especially in the euro area.

We also had the second discussion in four days on this proposal. It was a good exchange of views. Of course there are plenty of different views on aspects of our proposal, but that is only natural at this stage in the discussions.

What matters is that this was once again a very constructive discussion. I am fully confident that we can reach an agreement on these proposals in the coming weeks.

But there was one point on which the Eurogroup did achieve unanimity tonight. That was in recognising the excellent job that Mario Centeno i has done as President, over the past two-and-a-half years.

Your leadership was very impressive. From my point of view, and I am a newcomer here, especially in these fifteen hours just before Easter when you confounded the sceptics and reached an agreement on a €500 billion package.

Let me also congratulate you on your strong record as finance minister of Portugal.

This was not your last meeting as President so I will not yet say goodbye, but I can already say ‘Muito obrigado!'