Olli Rehn, the European Union’s commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, said he and his EU colleagues had received “plenty of advice” from IMF and U.S. officials about slowing deficit reduction and stimulating growth and jobs, but he insisted that those ideas were out of date. The 17 countries in the euro area will reduce their structural budget deficits by about 0.75 percent this year, half the pace of 2012’s 1.5 percentage point cut, Rehn said. By contrast, he noted, the U.S. is expected to reduce its structural deficit by some 1.75 percent thanks to the increase in payroll taxes at the start of the year and the automatic spending cuts known as the sequester.
Rehn’s boss, European Commission president José Manuel Barroso, underscored the softer budgetary stance in a Brussels speech just after the Washington meetings, saying the austerity agenda that has reigned in the EU since the bloc’s debt crisis erupted three years ago “has reached its limits.” And on April 26, the commission gave its blessing to a revised economic program by the government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, which pushes back the target for Spain to bring its deficit below the euro area limit of 3 percent of GDP by two years, to 2016.
新音调反映了变化的情况。预计今年欧元区的总赤字将降至约3％的GDP，从2011年的6％下降，减少了进一步预算削减的紧迫性。欧洲中央银行侵略行动的承诺减少了对单一货币和平时政府对债券市场警惕的担忧的担忧。
官员对欧洲的经济痛苦也越来越敏感：欧元区在2013年将在2013年举行第二次立即衰退，上个月预测该地区的经济将收缩0.3％。作为其新的经济计划的一部分，Rajoy的政府预测，西班牙经济产量今年将下降1.3％，类似于2012年的下降1.4％，今年失业率平均为27.1％。
在会议期间在华盛顿举办的希腊，爱尔兰和葡萄牙欧盟 - 国际货币基金组织救助商的新研究突出了紧缩计划的格仔记录。只有爱尔兰才会收到恢复债券市场准入并提高其竞争力，但增长率比预期和失业率慢 - 预期速度为14.6％ - 该研究发现高得多。希腊和葡萄牙尚未出现经济衰退或减少债务水平。这些计划的政治可持续性“仍然是一个仍然开放的问题”，参加的研究共同作者Jean Pisani-Ferry表示，由布鲁塞尔思想坦克布鲁格尔进行。
欧盟预算的变化更多的是口头上的，而不是实际的。德国财政部长沃尔夫冈•Schäuble坚称，欧元区不会改变其财政政策。西班牙的新经济计划包括结构性改革，如提高退休年龄和促进小企业增长的措施，而不是任何财政刺激。事实上，政府表示，为了达到2016年新的赤字目标，它将不得不推迟原定于2014年的减税计划。
尽管如此，欧盟官员承诺其他措施加强欧元区。Rehn表示，委员会将在夏季之前发出提案，以完成欧元区银行联盟，包括筹集失败的银行的决议机制，统一存款保险计划以及通过欧洲稳定机制直接重组银行的规定。