Brussels, 07/05/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 7 May, the European Commission used its new powers for the first time to punish a member state for manipulating its debt and deficit figures. Spain may be fined €18.93 million once the EU Council of Ministers has given the go-ahead.
Following an investigation by the EU's statistical office, Eurostat, the Commission decided that the local government of Valencia in Spain is guilty of gross negligence by systematically sending in false information to the Spanish statistics office from 1988 to 2012, particularly with regard to spending on healthcare. This resulted in the Spanish government deficit for 2011 having to be revised upwards by 0.2% of GDP.
The planned fine that the European Commission unveiled today is five times less than the fines possible under the 'Six Pack' economic governance legislation introduced in 2011 to give the Commission the power to issue penalties (but not retroactively). Commissioner Marianne Thyssen, who is responsible for Eurostat, justified the reduction in the fine (only calculating it for 2011) by the fact that: “The Commission has taken into account a series of mitigating factors such as the fact that the misrepresentation was the result of serious negligence rather than intentional and that it was the work of one entity acting alone.” (Jan Kordys)