Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, came out in support of some of the ideas presented above during his speech at Sorbonne University in 2017^[12]. This has had substantial political impact, seeing as neither the position of the Commission nor the leaders of European union have any decisive influence on the future of the eurozone. The decisive role in terms of these reforms is played by member states, and especially France and Germany. Macron supported the idea of budgets and a minister of finance for the eurozone with the aim of increasing structural investments and increasing economic growth. He concluded that the budgets for eurozone should come mostly from European taxes. At the same time, he backed the idea of more standardised taxation systems, regulations in terms of labour markets and social welfare payments across the whole of the EU.

The German  agreement supported the proposal for extracting some investment capital for the EMU. At the same time, there is no mention in the text about a separate budget or a finance minister for the eurozone

Because of their elections and difficult coalition talks, Germany waited half a year to respond to Macron’s speech. In the coalition deal arrived at in 2018, the parties of the new German cabinet devoted only five out of 177 pages to the future politics of the EU^[13]. The document stressed the need to strengthen the policies of austerity* within the EMU and follow the fiscal criteria set out by Maastricht. This was seen as a continuation of Wolfgang Schäuble’s earlier policies by Olaf Scholz (Acting Chairman of the Social Democratic Party), considered to be a proponent of budgetary discipline^[14]. Nevertheless, the agreement supported the proposal for extracting some investment capital for the EMU. At the same time, there is no mention in the text about a separate budget or a finance minister for the eurozone. The coalition members have agreed to setting up the EMF, and even mentioned the possibility of including it into European law. These are very general statements, which were later on interpreted by government politicians as not leading in any way to limiting the competencies of the Bundestag in terms of overseeing all financial transfers from the EMF^[15]. Some prominent politicians even questioned the need to establish the EMF^[16].

The government coalition supported actions needed to harmonise taxes and social standards in the EU. The document makes no mention of a banking union, but German politicians signalled that the condition for progress with reforms in this sector will be the stabilisation of the banking sector, and especially solving the problem of high-risk loans*^[17]. The coalition deal made by the new government clearly dampened the expectations some had regarding reforms in the eurozone.