Eurogroup President Kyriakos Pierrakakis told an EU budget conference that the EU’s long-term budget should focus on expanding Europe’s capacity to generate economic growth because “the euro cannot be stronger than the economy that stands behind it.”
Speaking in his role as both Greece’s finance minister and head of the Eurogroup — the forum of eurozone finance ministers — Pierrakakis said the EU budget’s impact should be considered not only in terms of what it pays for, but also the “economic logic that it embodies,” according to his speech released by the Eurogroup on Thursday.
He declared that markets “do not invest in currencies alone” but in the “productive capacity, resilience and credibility” of the economies behind them, adding that technology, energy security and economic dependencies were reshaping economies in Europe and globally.
Pierrakakis also argued that the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) — the EU’s seven-year budget plan — should be seen as a way to strengthen “long-term capacity to generate prosperity”, rather than a “zero-sum game of spending.”
Telecom spectrum raised as example of fragmentation
As an example, Pierrakakis pointed to the way radio spectrum for telecoms is managed across the EU, describing it as a strategic asset for areas including artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, autonomous mobility, satellite connectivity, secure communications and defence capabilities, the Eurogroup said.
He noted that spectrum is still organised through “27 separate auction systems” with different timelines, licence conditions, investment incentives and regulators, and compared that with companies dealing with “one single regulator” in the United States.
Pierrakakis said that as Europe prepares for “6G assignments” and the renewal of existing 5G licences, there was an opportunity to rethink how spectrum is organised.
He cited Greece’s 2020 spectrum auction, saying it was designed to support fast rollout rather than maximise revenue, with 25% of proceeds used to create a fund that invested in the wider 5G “ecosystem” and applications.
Pierrakakis also set out a hypothetical scenario in which spectrum auctions were synchronised across the EU, with proceeds used partly as an “own resource” for the MFF and partly to create a larger investment fund, potentially via the European Investment Bank.
