On Monday 23 October, the statistical office of the European Union (Eurostat) published a press release with figures concerning the government debt and deficit on the basis of data supplied by the member states and showing an improvement in public finances in 2016 in both the eurozone and the EU as a whole.
In the eurozone, for instance, government deficit fell from 2.1% of gross domestic product (GDP) at the end of 2015 to 1.5% of GDP at the end of 2016, while this fell by 0.7 points in...