Search
Transcript of interview with Klaus Regling, ESM Managing Director
ERT (Greek TV station), 19 June 2017
Transcript of introductory remarks by ESM Managing Director Klaus Regling
Eurogroup press conference, 15 June 2017
The annual report contains a description of the ESM's policies, activities, financial statements and economic developments in 2016. Additionally, it contains an external auditor's report and a report of the Board of Auditors.
Eurogroup statement on Greece
The Eurogroup welcomes that agreement has been reached between Greece and the institutions on a policy package of structural measures, which aims at shoring up growth and addressing the underlying structural imbalances in public finances and paves the way for a successful completion of the second review of the ESM programme.
The EFSF/ESM provide loans to euro area countries that have lost sustainable market access or suffered shocks to their banking systems when these problems could spill over to other countries and even destabilise the entire single currency area. The EFSF/ESM have lent substantial funds in six programmes to five euro area Member States – Ireland, Portugal, Greece (second and third programmes), Spain, and Cyprus – and proactively monitor their repayment capacity.
NPLs in the euro area remain a barrier to full recovery and a potential source of instability to the financial system. They represent a problematic issue overall as they tie up bank capital, put pressure on banks’ profitability and funding costs, and burden corporates and households with at least some unserviceable debt.
J. Dijsselbloem, Chairman of ESM Board of Governors
Ladies and gentlemen, we the 19 finance ministers of the euro area just met for the fifth Annual Meeting of the ESM Board of Governors, in the building of the ESM. My colleagues and I unanimously approved the 2016 Annual Report of the ESM, and the financial statement.
The five euro area countries that requested financial assistance from the EFSF or ESM suffered from a number of problems. One key weakness that led some of them down the wrong path economically: a structural imbalance in their growth model. This model relied strongly on domestic demand fuelled by unsustainable government spending, large wage increases, and surging private indebtedness funded by foreign creditors. High wage rises combined with low productivity growth made domestic goods and services more expensive and less competitive on international markets.