4 June, Euro-11

Date: 11/06/1998

FINANCE ministers of the 11 countries which will be forming a monetary union in January held their inaugural meeting at the Château de Senningen on the outskirts of Luxembourg city. The mini-council, known as the Euro-11, was chaired by Austrian Finance Minister Rudolf Edlinger and attended by European Commission President Jacques Santer and Economics Commissioner Yves-Thibault de Silguy. The meeting began with a statement by the president of the full 15-strong Council of finance ministers (Ecofin), the UK's Gordon Brown, who then left.

EDLINGER set out the aims of his Euro-11 presidency: deciding how to interact with Ecofin without usurping any of its powers and organising the mini-council's work in the run-up to EMU. “We must avoid the appearance of differentiated evolution between the 11 euro-zone countries and the four other members of the EU,” said Edlinger. He added that the four 'outs' would be invited to take part in a meeting in the fringes of the Ecofin 'informal' gathering in Vienna on 25-26 September, and that EU monetary committee chairman Sir Nigel Wicks would take part in all Euro-11 meetings.

MINISTERS agreed the Euro-11 should remain informal and efficient. This meant ministers should only be accompanied by one other official at meetings to facilitate “more open discussions”, said Edlinger. They also decided the Euro-11 should meet for two hours before Ecofins on 6 July, 25-26 September, 12 October and 1 December. Edlinger said European Central Bank president Wim Duisenberg would be invited to the July meeting.

DE SILGUY warned ministers that they were falling behind in their drive to cut public spending in anticipation of EMU. He presented them with an optimistic Commission economic analysis, but insisted they must not rely on growth to narrow their budget deficits. Instead, they should hack away at the “structural” elements of spending. “There has been a clear slowdown in the reduction of deficits,” he complained.

THE Commissioner promised ministers that he was working on a plan to make his Directorate-General for economic and monetary affairs (DGII) a more effective “management tool” for the euro-area. De Silguy said the Commission would circulate a briefing note at the beginning of each Euro-11 meeting. This would require reliable data, and he complained that monthly figures for employment and trade were not as good as those for inflation. Ministers invited the monetary committee to bring together national statistics offices, Eurostat and economic affairs ministries to draw up a plan for data-gathering with the ECB and the Commission.