Brussels, 25/11/2014 (Agence Europe) - On Friday 28 November, the European Commission will return its opinion on the draft 2015 budgets of the member states of the eurozone.
It will state that five countries are compliant with their budgetary objectives: Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Slovakia. Four other countries will be deemed broadly compliant: Estonia, Latvia, Slovenia and Finland.
Seven other countries from the eurozone, including France, will be classed as at risk of non-compliance with the budgetary commitments made at European level. These countries will be invited to make additional efforts by the spring.
At the moment, the Commission does not plan to give any particular country more time to clean up its public finances, as it is waiting for the execution of the 2014 budgets to be finalised and the 2015 budgets to be voted on.
In late October, France came very close to sanctions. The meetings which took place to discuss this issue in Brisbane, as part of the G20 summit, between President Juncker and Vice-President Dombrovskis (euro), who went at the last minute to replace Commissioner Moscovici (economic affairs), are reported not to have gone too well. At this stage, the Commission still takes the view that France's structural effort (not including the economic situation) for 2015 will not exceed 0.3% of GDP, rather than the 0.8% promised and the 0.5% announced by Paris at the end of last month.
Nor will the Commission take any further proceedings against Italy and Belgium over their excessive public debts.
Last week, France, Belgium and Italy were asked to provide confirmation of their commitment to the structural reforms underway. The Italian letter was leaked to the press last week. It is also worth noting that the open letter by Commissioner Oettinger (digital) published in French daily newspaper Les Echos, accusing France of being a “recidivist deficit” country (our translation), is reported to have gone down very badly at the highest level of the European Commission. (EL)