{"id":980717,"date":"2026-05-23T22:34:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T22:34:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/980717\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T22:34:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T22:34:19","slug":"imf-says-european-unions-public-debt-to-be-on-unsustainable-path-without-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/980717\/","title":{"rendered":"IMF Says European Unions Public Debt to Be on Unsustainable Path without Action"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>        <a href=\"https:\/\/www.islamtimes.com\/en\/news\/1281861\/imf-says-european-union-s-public-debt-to-be-on-unsustainable-path-without-action\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/n01281861-b.jpg\" alt=\"IMF Says European Union\" s=\"\" public=\"\" debt=\"\" to=\"\" be=\"\" on=\"\" unsustainable=\"\" path=\"\" without=\"\" action=\"\" title=\"IMF Says European Union\" class=\"img-responsive\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>            Islam Times &#8211; European Union countries will face large bills for defence, energy and pensions in the next 15 years, the International Monetary Fund told EU finance ministers on Saturday, suggesting a mix of reforms, consolidation and joint borrowing as a way \u2060to manage \u2060that.&#8221;If left unchecked, public debt will be on an unsustainable path. Under unchanged policy, debt of the average European country would reach 130 percent of GDP by 2040 &#8211; roughly doubling from today,&#8221; the IMF said in a paper used as a basis for the ministers&#8217; discussions at an informal meeting in Nicosia, according to The Economic Times.<\/p>\n<p>The paper said that to prevent such a scenario, EU countries must improve incentives for citizens to move around the 27-nation bloc to find work and for companies \u2060to hire them.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The EU should also integrate its energy markets, make it easier for citizens&#8217; savings to flow across the bloc into profitable investments and unify laws that now \u2060often differ from country to country.<\/p>\n<p>Pension reforms and a higher retirement age would also help, as would government guarantees for riskier investments in low-carbon and climate-resilient projects that would help attract private capital to them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is one of those areas where there are differences of opinion, but it&#8217;s certainly one of the areas which we will be discussing in the coming months,&#8221; the chairman of \u2060euro zone finance ministers Kyriakos Pierrakakis told Reuters.<\/p>\n<p>The IMF said that even with reforms, most EU countries would still need fiscal consolidation to put debt on a declining path, though the more ambitious the reforms, the less consolidation would be needed.<\/p>\n<p>It said that if governments did not act now, the problem would only get worse.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The &#8216;muddling-through&#8217; approach that many countries have adopted so far is reaching its limits, and a more strategic response seems essential to respond to rising spending pressures,&#8221; the IMF said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Making changes in a piecemeal way, or tinkering at the margins, is likely to be inadequate,&#8221; it said.&#13;\n  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Islam Times &#8211; European Union countries will face large bills for defence, energy and pensions in the next&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":980718,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5174],"tags":[203639,14040,10281,5176,27616,25029,939,3425,5248,33482,2825,2993,35,2000,299,5187,1699,26660,474,3576,12496,10647,256,522,41,65703,17739,143078,176450,157671,114481,2583,3577,254,107865,617,7482,43579,2955,21029,24668,272839,61939,5598,15822,6093,71308,7922,272838,13690,9985,10909,42402],"class_list":["post-980717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-203639","tag-a","tag-action","tag-and","tag-as","tag-be","tag-bills","tag-borrowing","tag-consolidation","tag-countries","tag-debt","tag-defence","tag-energy","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-european-union","tag-face","tag-finance","tag-for","tag-fund","tag-imf","tag-in","tag-international","tag-islam","tag-joint","tag-large","tag-manage","tag-ministers","tag-mix","tag-monetary","tag-next","tag-of","tag-on","tag-path","tag-pensions","tag-public","tag-reforms","tag-s","tag-saturday","tag-says","tag-suggesting","tag-that","tag-the","tag-times","tag-to","tag-told","tag-union","tag-unsustainable","tag-way","tag-will","tag-without","tag-years"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=980717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/980718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=980717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=980717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=980717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}