Donohoe (Wednesday, 9:00 AM)

[Europe’s] adjacency to economic shocks is very, very high . . . To have many European economies that now have record levels of employment and have economies that are still growing is a stronger performance than is sometimes acknowledged.

Paschal Donohoe Minister for Finance, Ireland; President, Eurogroup

In terms of our presidency, the two themes that we are very likely to be prioritizing would be competitiveness . . . and then the second one will be our stewardship of the negotiations with regard to the MFF, the budget of the European Union.

Our base of defense spending is low. But it's rapidly increasing . . . Even though we're a neutral country, we do have security interests, and we need to do more on them at the moment.

We have an economy that's open, that is competitive, that has a high level of investment within us, and that wants to play a role as a bridge between the US and the European Union.

I now see the efforts that individual finance ministers make and governments make to try to reach consensus on key issues . . . It's how we've managed to maintain a cooperative and an aligned approach to the recent, very big challenges that we have faced.

Paschal Donohoe Minister for Finance, Ireland; President, Eurogroup