European Union finance ministers will resume talks on the second day of the ECOFIN conference at Punchestown in Co Kildare this morning.
Last night the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, expressed his confidence that "the stable macro economic environment will support the European recovery."
He said "ministers, for their part, were committed to maintaining fiscal discipline. This discipline supports economic confidence and will in turn allow monetary policy to have its desired effects".
The European Central Bank faced no criticism for holding interest rates steady, the finance ministers said, although some said they would prefer more monetary leniency.
The ECB surprised financial markets on Thursday by giving no clear sign that it stands ready to cut interest rates if the economic data shows signs that recovery could falter.
Italy's Prime Minister Mr Silvio Berlusconi said he was disappointed by that decision. "We were hoping for a cut in the EU (interest rate) level, which as you know did not come," he told a press conference in Rome yesterday.
But European Union finance ministers, after a session with ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet kicking off two days of informal meetings outside Dublin, publicly supported the central bank's diagnosis that the economy is set to gather speed later this year.
"We are all concerned by low growth, but it is the EU view that the road to growth is through structural measures not through short-term measures to stimulate demand," said European Union Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Mr Pedro Solbes.