The measures come after Brussels concluded that seven Member States had a deficit exceeding 3% of GDP: France, Italy, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Romania.
The Council of the European Union (EU) confirmed on Friday the opening of procedures for excessive budget deficits in seven Member States, within the scope of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), a process suspended between 2020 and 2023 due to Covid-19.
Belgium (with a public deficit of 4.4% of Gross Domestic Product – GDP), France (5.5%), Italy (7.4%), Hungary (6.7%), Malta (4.9%), Poland (5.1%) and Slovakia (4.9%) are the countries to which the procedures are addressed, while the one previously adopted in 2020, for Romania (6.6%), remains open due to a lack of corrective measures.
The Commission is expected to present specific recommendations for the affected countries in November, as part of the European Semester autumn package.
The decision came after Brussels concluded in the spring package published in June that the The public administration deficit in these seven countries recorded values above 3% of GDPthe maximum limit stipulated by the EU treaties.
At the time, the EU executive said that Portugal, after several years of warnings and having reached an excessive deficit, stopped recording macroeconomic imbalances, attributing the change to the “reduction of vulnerabilities” at the budgetary level.
The excessive deficit procedure aims to ensure that all Member States regain or maintain budgetary discipline, while keeping public debt at sustainable levels, below 60% of GDP.
If an excessive deficit occurs in a Member State, the objective of the excessive deficit procedure is to encourage its correction by subjecting Member States to increased scrutiny and by providing them with recommendations for taking effective measures to correct the deficit.
Source: Observadora
