Mr. Pierre Moscovici:

I will take a little time. The Brussels group is not the new name of the troika. The troika was not only the functioning of the three institutions which are still on board - the ECB, the IMF and the Commission - but also a way of proceeding, with people going to Greece and telling the politicians what they had to do and what prior actions had to be taken. It was useful at one stage; it is no longer the way we function. We have the Brussels group, which is those three institutions together with the ESM and the Greek Government, and we are trying to find a deal and an agreement. I see that the Greek Government itself wants reforms, and the question is how far and how fast this can go. We do not want to impose more austerity on Greece. Debts have to be repaid and reforms have to be made if one wants to have a more competitive economy that is capable of creating more jobs. We are looking for an agreement and I wish for agreement. I want Greece to stay in the eurozone. It is not the beginning of the end. On the contrary, this agreement will be the beginning of a more solid Greece inside the eurozone. We have little time to reach that. We are making progress and we are discussing it constructively, but that is the way we are now moving.

The ECB certainly did not tell the Irish Government to save banks at any cost.

As the committee will know, I have been a politician for quite a long time. I was an MP in my country for 20 years, and I remember the financial crisis, yet one has to see that the level of public debt is too high. If one is in favour, as the Deputy said with regard to reform versus investment, of more investment in some public services, then one must be aware that each euro that is dedicated to reimbursing public debt is a euro that is not useful for the economy or public services. It is one euro less to finance education, health care, child care or whatever. So, on the contrary, one can see it is a pre-condition in order to have more investment and better public services. That is why there is no contradiction.

I shall return to discussing banks. The Commission has contributed to the banking inquiry, and Mr. Marco Buti, the Director-General for Economic and Financial Affairs, ECFIN, is willing to contribute further. He did it once before and is willing do so a second time, if necessary. I believe that the choices made in those difficult years were necessary, but they must be seen in that specific context. Those choices do not prove that public debt is a friend of an economy, but the contrary.

Macro imbalances must be addressed at a global level in the EU. My personal conviction is that the question of inequalities must be addressed in the future. We discussed structural reforms in the previous period, which predated this crisis. We are now in a period of recovery and this question cannot be ignored. Certainly, we need to take this matter into account in the future.

Corporate taxation is a major project for us. We will deliver an action plan in the weeks to come.