We began our discussion on the digital euro, together with our EU colleagues who are from outside the euro area. We reviewed the speed of change of the European payments landscape. We discussed the advancements that are taking place in payment technologies and the shift towards cashless transactions that have all redefined expectations regarding the future of the euro.
Any decision to introduce a digital euro would not only be a response to these emerging trends. It would need to be a positive step to ensure that the euro remains fit in a quickly changing digital and payments world. Since we discussed this last, the European Central Bank has continued to work on the technical preparations. Discussions between co-legislators are also advancing on the proposed legal framework.
In our exchange with ministers today, we acknowledged again that public outreach on the digital euro remains key for the success of its potential future rollout. Ultimately, it’s the citizens themselves who will make a decision on whether to use a digital euro, so their views and their trust are essential ingredients of this project. The Eurogroup will continue to politically engage in it to ensure that we remain a strategic anchor to this common European project.
We then turned to the topic of competitiveness. Some of you may recall that around a year ago we initiated discussions and have been addressing the issue of competitiveness now from many different angles in recent meetings. We are now moving towards a conclusion. Today I reviewed with ministers the different topics that we’ve discussed. We looked at individual policy areas, at discussions that cut across individual policy areas and at what could be the key elements of a draft Eurogroup statement. I received feedback from nearly every minister who was present here today.
Our deputies are going to continue to work on this topic and I aim to come back to it in November with the hope of reaching agreement on a text that reflects our shared vision, ensuring that the voice of finance ministers is also present in the different decisions that will be taken on how we enhance the competitiveness of our Union in the years ahead.
We then followed up with a key pillar of this competitiveness work, the follow-up to the statement on the future of the Capital Markets Union (CMU). This is in line with the roadmap on CMU that we endorsed in May. Our discussion looked at how our capital markets can be developed to support mid-sized companies across all EU countries and the role of the European Investment Bank (EIB) in delivering this.
I was pleased to welcome back our colleague Nadia Calviño to our session. She talked about the different initiatives that the EIB is considering in order to provide targeted support to innovative EU businesses to allow them to grow within Europe. Maintaining political momentum on the CMU project is a really important priority for the Eurogroup. In November we are going to come back to this and assess the different steps that have been taken at national level since we began this project just under a year ago.
We have the Euro summit coming up on 18 October and I informed my colleagues of the letter that I plan to send to President Michel and of what will be the different strands of the presentation that I’ll make to the heads of government in a couple of weeks’ time.
We also discussed our preparation for the international meetings in Washington in a few weeks – the IMF and World Bank Annual meetings and a meeting of the G7 finance ministers. Our colleague Giancarlo Giorgetti gave us an update on work that is happening at the level of the Italian G7 presidency. We had a quick discussion on main topics and reaffirmed our view in relation to exchange rate developments.
We also welcomed our new colleagues from Estonia and France – Ministers Jürgen Ligi and Antoine Armand. Each of them gave us a presentation on their priorities, and we look forward to working closely with them in the time ahead.