Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Monday, 20 September 2021
Joint Oireachtas Committee on European Union Affairs
Developments at European Union Level: Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni
Mr. Paolo Gentiloni:
Yes. During this process of shifting from what the German finance minister called the bazooka to a more sophisticated form of support we will also have a discussion on the future of the fiscal rules. The contemporary path of these two things is interesting. We have to steer our common fiscal policies with their unprecedented interplay with monetary policies and at the same time we have to discuss the future of our fiscal rules. On the future of our fiscal rules, I will add one thing to what I said in my remarks. My intention is to try to avoid the reopening of an old discussion. We had ten years of discussion and we have a new situation. Our problem is not to solve the discussion of the previous ten years but to look for what we need looking forward. We need rules that help investments for our strategic transitions and rules that allow this extraordinary new debt that was created to react to the pandemic to be reduced to the targets that we have in our treaties in a way that is realistic and not damaging to our economies. It is easy to say. To build a consensus on this will be a real challenge, but we owe this to our citizens.
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