Dear Presidents,
Ministers,
Colleagues from the social partners.
I do not like to be a pessimist, but the situation is grim.
The global and European economic forecasts have been revised downwards.
Inflation is still very low, despite all the efforts made by the ECB.
We had finally started to have some breathing space as we were recovering from the 2008/2012 crisis. Now the growth prospects are reported to be weaker than last year.
Also looking at the employment figures and claiming all is positive would be misleading.