FRANKFURT, Feb 5 (Reuters) – European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde will present EU leaders next week with a checklist of measures needed to enhance growth and competitiveness, taking an unusual step to raise pressure on governments to speed up a slow and often timid reform process.
European leaders have long debated a host of steps from more integration to better regulation but even U.S. tariffs and war on the bloc’s eastern border have failed to meaningfully speed up the process.
While the ECB has long outlined what needed to be done, overlapping with the conclusion of former ECB chief and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s own report, Lagarde upped the ante on Thursday, after previously saying the bank’s calls are often shrugged off as it’s “still the same thing”.
“What we decided to do, in anticipation of that meeting on the 12th of February, is to actually give our checklist to the leaders,” Lagarde told a news conference after the ECB’s policy meeting.
“This is our checklist of what we regard as very much likely to enhance growth, to improve productivity, and to really unleash the talent of Europe,” she said.
EU leaders are due to meet next week at an informal retreat, focusing on strengthening the single market in a new ‘geoeconomic context’.
To be sent to all EU leaders, the list will contain items on the savings and investment union, as well as the digital euro and the tokenised wholesale central bank money, Lagarde said.
It will also include tasks on deepening the single market, fostering innovation, simplifying legislation and strengthening the core institutional framework.
“We cannot deliver it all,” Lagarde said. “But we strongly feel that significant reforms have to be either deepened or accelerated in order to deliver on what is the potential of Europe.”
(Reporting by Balazs Koranyi; Editing by Susan Fenton)
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