Euro area economic policy 2026

Key Points

The EESC:

• believes that strengthening Europe's political unity and its capacity for action by its strategic autonomy in areas such as foreign, security and defence policy and trade, industrial and technological development policy will also boost growth;
• is concerned as to whether the EU and the Member States will have sufficient tools, particularly budgetary tools, to implement the Commission's recommendations, and reiterates that the need to mobilise all funding instruments, both public and private;
• is concerned that defence is being prioritised at the expense of funding for priority environmental and social objectives or even essential energy or digital infrastructure;
• calls for making full use of Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) funds for the initial objectives, the revised objectives and, ultimately, new investment in European common goods;
• agrees with the Commission on the need to prioritise removing the remaining barriers in the single market, but underlines also the need for reducing the investment gap by: creating a Strategic Investment Fund for European common goods; encouraging private investment – renewing InvestEU and completing the Savings and Investments Union without further delay,; lowering energy prices – interconnecting networks and the Energy Union and extending clean and renewable energy; strengthening European R&D&I programmes; and improving education and developing human capital;
• believes that ‘simplification’ should always respect labour and consumer rights and the objectives of the just green and digital transitions. It also believes that it is essential to defend the EU’s regulatory autonomy against external pressures that seek to change good regulations, such as those on digital markets and AI;
• believes that access to decent housing is a fundamental right of all European citizens, and that the European Affordable Housing Plan should include all the support measures that the EU can provide to Member States for the construction of social housing, starting with financial support;
• agrees with the recommendation on promoting the international role of the euro and creating a digital euro to help achieve this, adding that completing the Capital Markets Union and managing a sufficient and sustainable common stock of debt in euro would also be in line with this objective;
• reiterates its call to regulate the participation of organised civil society in the EU’s economic governance through the European semester and regrets that the issue is not addressed in the recommendation.