By Nick Mann | 30 October 2012
Spain has given a cool response to proposals for a European Union ‘super-commissioner’ with powers to intervene in the budget-setting of member states.
The plan to bolster the role of the EU commissioner for economic and monetary affairs was originally mooted by German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble earlier this month.
But Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy, meeting his Italian counterpart Mario Monti yesterday, said: ‘I don’t like this idea.’ The proposal could, however, be considered within other proposals ‘of a fiscal nature’, he added.
Monti also gave the idea a less-than-positive response. ‘It doesn't sound very good,’ he was reported to have said. ‘Markets could take this as a sign that current instruments do not work.’
Their comments came after the president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, said he was ‘fully in favour’ of the commissioner being given a direct say in national budgets.
In an interview with German magazine Der Spiegel, published yesterday, he said: ‘I firmly believe that, in order to restore confidence in the euro area, countries need to transfer part of their sovereignty to the European level.’
Draghi welcomed the ‘fiscal compact’ commitment made by 25 out of 27 EU member states in March, which aims to ensure countries achieve a balanced budget. ‘Governments are on the right path,’ he said. ‘They have committed themselves to transferring more competencies for budgetary and financial policy to the European level.’
But he added that more needed to be done. ‘The governments have taken decisions that would have been inconceivable even one year ago. This is progress, but it is not enough.’
Exactly what shape budgetary supervision and intervention in EU budgets would take is expected to be up for discussion at a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels on December 13–14.
Rajoy also said Spain did not yet plan to use the ECB's new bailout programme, which entails the central bank buying unlimited amounts of bonds issued by countries worst hit by the eurozone crisis to reduce their borrowing costs.
‘When I feel that it is in Spain's best interests to ask for it, I will do so, but not before,’ he said. ‘The government has not requested it for the time being because it considers that it is not essential to defend the best interests of the Spanish people.’
