Member States endorse the agreement to strengthen the Structural Reform Support Programme

The European Commission welcomes today’s decision by the EU Ambassadors (Coreper) to endorse the preliminary agreement between the European Parliament and the Council on increasing the budget of the Structural Reform Support Programme by €80 million.

This would bring the total budget of the Programme to €222.8 million for the years 2017-2020 and enable the EU to respond to the high demand from Member States for support to prepare, design and implement growth-enhancing reforms. It would also allow targeted technical support to be provided to EU Member States wishing to adopt the euro. The proposal to strengthen the Structural Reform Support Programme is part of European Commission’s package of proposals of 6 December 2017 to deepen Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union. Valdis Dombrovskis, Vice-President for the Euro and Social Dialogue, also in charge of Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union, said: “The political agreement reached by the European Parliament and the Council last week was a major step forward in enhancing the partnership for reforms to ensure sustainable and inclusive growth. Deepening of our Economic and Monetary Union starts at home. By strengthening the governance and economic structures at national level countries reinforce the resilience of their economies and the euro area as a whole. We look forward to the formal adoption of the proposal by the Parliament to allow Member States to benefit from the budget increase already in 2019.” The Structural Reform Support Programme (SRSP) entered into force in May 2017 and currently has a budget of €142.8 million for the years 2017-2020. The support is provided by the Structural Reform Support Service (SRSS) created in 2015 to support Member States in the preparation, design and implementation of institutional, structural and administrative reforms.