Eurogroup president Kyriakos Pierrakakis told an Atlantic Council event on the margins of the IMF and World Bank Group annual meetings in Bangkok that Europe needs reforms to raise productivity.
Pierrakakis said the EU is “in the midst of a challenging situation” which is sharpening the focus on delivering reforms “one after the other”, the Eurogroup informed in a release on Thursday.
He pointed to the Savings and Investments Union (SIU) — an EU initiative intended to make it easier for savings to be channelled into investment across the bloc — saying savings are accumulating in EU bank accounts but are not being directed into investments.
Pierrakakis said agreement reached by EU finance ministers on market supervision at the 9 October ECOFIN meeting was a core element of putting the SIU in place.
Capital markets and banking scale
“We need more integrated capital markets in Europe,” Pierrakakis stated during the discussion.
He also spoke about building “European champions” in the banking sector and cited a recent European Central Bank study suggesting that one third of the productivity gap between the EU and the United States could be addressed if Europe had the same distribution of large and small companies as the US.
On the ongoing energy crisis, Pierrakakis said there was a need to support businesses and households while remaining mindful of fiscal credibility and fiscal responsibility.
