“I share with the Portuguese minister the [belief in the] need for the European Union to reflect on the policy that is being followed where fiscal austerity is concerned” Spain’s minister José Manuel García-Margallo said after a meeting between the two men in Lisbon.
“At a moment in which there are shadows on the economic horizon, flexibility where the budget is concerned - given that monetary policy has given all that it could give - is absolutely indispensable,” he said.
García-Margallo was during his visit to the Portuguese capital awarded the Grand Cross of Portugal’s Order of Merit by his Portuguese counterpart, Augusto Santos Silva, at a ceremony at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Santos Silva’s two immediate predecessors, Paulo Portas and Rui Machete, both attended the ceremony. Both served in the previous centre-right government and both had García-Margallo as their Spanish counterpart.
At their meeting, Santos Silva and García-Margallo discussed cooperation - bilateral and in the framework of the European Union, as well as the international political situation.
“We exchanged very useful views in the framework of the preparation of the next European semester,” Santos Silva said, in a reference to the timetable laid out for Euro Zone members to submit their state budgets to the European Commission for review. “It is very important that there are neither geographical nor ideological fronts in the EU.
“We are all members of the economic and monetary union and it is in that context, of its rules and of the intelligent application of its rules that we must find solutions, in particular in moments when the world economy is once more showing signs of some slowdown,” the Portuguese minister said.
García-Margallo agreed, saying that what was needed was instead “a European front for the good of Europe”.
He added that both governments view with concern the debate on whether the UK might leave the EU in the run up to the referendum on 23 June. This, he argued, is an opportunity for Euro Zone countries to take “a step in front, of great quality” saying that he favoured the mutualisation of Euro Zone members’ debt, with the issuing of European bonds “that would necessarily oblige the establishment of a debt agency, a treasury department and an economic government.”
Asked whether Portugal backed this position, Santos Silva said that the country “is ready to consider all solutions that make it possible to strengthen integration in the [euro] zone ... and above all that make it possible to combine the rules appropriate to a monetary union, with a new policy for economic convergence between [European] Union member states.”