Let me walk you through the main points from today’s meeting. Our first item was stocktaking of macroeconomic developments. It’s clear that we are in a very dynamic and uncertain environment. There is obvious uncertainty with regard to tariffs on trade, to the security situation in Europe and the impact of all these developments on growth and investment on growth and investment. It is important to highlight that the euro area economy continues to be remarkably resilient considering all of this. The latest projections show a slightly lower growth profile than was originally expected but some of the latest news will be growth positive.
We then had a discussion on fiscal policy. We acknowledged that the geopolitical reality has changed, and the focus in Europe is now firmly on relying more on ourselves and less on others, especially in the area of security and defence. This will clearly have an impact on our current and future budgets. Some important measures have been announced, and all ministers are working through the implications of these new priorities on budget preparation. We all know that stability and safety in our public finances also goes hand in hand with security and this combination plays a role in reducing the scale of risks that we may face in the future.
Some of us around the table had participated in a G7 meeting that took place in South Africa. So in the Eurogroup today, in inclusive format, we debriefed all ministers on that particular discussion and made the case for the importance of those kinds of exchanges and the need for solidarity and for support in dealing with the challenges that the trading system will face in the time ahead.
We also had a very important discussion on crypto-assets markets. This is an area which is evolving very fast, both politically and technologically, and today was getting a very clear picture of where we stand. We know this is a global market and policy developments in other jurisdictions can have important consequences for us here in Europe. So these discussions are fundamentally linked to our own autonomy and to the resilience of our currency. The digital euro is critical to staying ahead of the curve in this area. A huge amount of technical work has now been done and there is growing appreciation amongst ministers of the importance of this work.
Finally, we had a discussion in advance of the euro area summits. This month marks the one -year anniversary of the Eurogroup statement on the future of the capital markets union. Today we had a quick update on the work that we’re doing to monitor progress at a national level. We got an update from Commissioner Dombrovskis on the work currently taking place in the Commission, that will shortly be concluding. I also presented to the Eurogroup a quick summary of the points that I plan to make in the Euro Summit and that I will be further communicating in my usual letter to President Costa. As is regular with new governments, we had a presentation of the policy priorities of the new government of Austria.