• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Remarks by Paschal Donohoe following the Eurogroup meeting of 19 June 2025

European Council / Council of the European Union

Eurogroup
Statements and remarks
19 June 2025 21:20

Today, we took a very important decision to recommend that Bulgaria become the 21st member of our euro area family. This is a well-deserved achievement for Bulgaria. It is an acknowledgement of the commitment, the significant convergence process that has been undertaken, and the enormous work by the Bulgarian authorities. It's also a really good signal for the strength of our monetary union.

The euro is the foremost symbol of European integration and mutual confidence between countries. It is the foundation for the prosperity of our citizens and an anchor of stability for our region. We specifically welcomed two convergence reports from the Commission and from the ECB, and we concurred with the institutions that Bulgaria fulfils the criteria for introducing the euro. The Bulgarian Minister of Finance and the Governor of the Central Bank have clearly stated their commitment to sound policies, together with maintaining a sustainable convergence path and ensuring Bulgaria's smooth participation in the Euro area. So we prepared in the Eurogroup the necessary draft recommendation to the Council on the adoption of the euro by Bulgaria on 1 January of next year. This will serve as an input into the Ecofin Council discussions that will take place tomorrow. I believe that the rest of the legislative process will go smoothly.

Moving on to other matters, our meeting continued with a discussion with another Bulgarian guest, in this case the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kristalina Georgieva. Her team joined us for two separate discussions. The first was our regular discussion on euro area policies, which the IMF assessed under their Article IV work. This time we had a particular focus on financial sector issues, as the fund is completing its in-depth assessment of our financial sector under its Financial Sector Assessment Program and the fund is about to issue its concluding statement. This gave us a good basis for our regular stocktaking on economic developments within the euro area. The good news is that our economies continue to show resilience, thanks in no small part to our coordinated policy response. At the same time, the IMF rightly pointed out that risks are rising and we have unfinished business. We took note of the IMF's comments on the need for prudent and differentiated budget priorities across the euro area. We also had a discussion item to check in on where we are with our medium term budget plans and also with regard to our budgets for 2025, following up on our commitments of just over half a year ago. We therefore touched on the recent draft budget plans of Belgium and Austria.

The other main priority we face is the need to reinforce security in Europe and the spending that will be involved in doing this. As finance ministers, we focused on ensuring that necessary resources can be mobilised and at the same time maintaining our commitment to a stable euro area and to clear budget rules. We're going to come back to the fiscal coordination aspects of this in our next meeting, where we'll focus on the budget stance for the euro area as a whole, ahead of our budget preparations for 2026.

We then had a very constructive exchange, enabled again by the IMF and by the work the Commission is doing on the new Single Market strategy, on further steps that we can take to remove barriers on the EU Single Market and the contribution that that can make to boosting our competitiveness and our growth. The Eurogroup broadly agreed with the IMF's assessment as to where our main priorities lie.

Our long meeting concluded then with an important item of substance regarding the digital euro project. Since we touched on this project last time, technical work by the ECB has moved on and deliberations by the co-legislators on the legal framework are moving ahead. The discussion that we had today highlighted the continued political backing for this key project, recognising its strategic importance and the growing need to move forward in a timely manner. While we have done a lot, some outstanding issues remain. We agreed on the need to intensify efforts to identify workable solutions and looked at how we can coordinate our efforts as the Polish presidency concludes, and then the really important work which the Danish presidency is going to carry out on this. We couldn't be more committed to trying to find a successful conclusion. And we will look at how we will do this work in the time ahead.

A final but important note on the presidency of the Eurogroup. As you know, my current term will come to an end on the 12 July. The election process, with a call for candidates, was launched today at the Eurogroup, and at the next Eurogroup meeting on 7 July, the matter will be dealt with. I've made public my intention to ask for support from my colleagues to continue my work. Thank you.