Brussels, 15/03/2001 (Agence Europe) - According to Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Communities, the government balance of the Euro zone (excluding Greece) rose from a deficit of 1.3% of GDP in 1999 to a surplus of 0.3% in 2000, and for the EU 15, from a deficit of 0.6% to a surplus of 1.2%. The government debt ratio compared to GDP continued to fall, from 72% in 1999 to 69% in 2000 in the Euro zone and from 68% to 64.2% in the EU as a whole. Gerassimos Thomas, the spokesperson for the European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs, felt that these results can firstly be explained by the strength of growth and by a fall in the debt servicing burden. He underlined that the figures could have been better, and recalls that the Commission deplores the fact that the Member States did not seize, last year, the opportunity of strong growth to improve their structural budgetary situation.
The sale of UMTS licences had a significant impact on the government balance for 2000, in particular on the figures for Germany (2.5% of GDP) and the United Kingdom (2.4% of GDP); the impact was 1.2% of GDP in Italy, 0.7% in the Netherlands, 0.4% in Austria, 0.3% in Portugal and 0.1% in Spain. The licences have been granted for free in Finland and Sweden. Eurostat dampens the "UMTS effect" by noting that even when excluding the sale of licences, the falling trend in State deficits would have been confirmed, the Euro zone and the EU as a whole would have recorded in 2000 a State deficit of respectively 0.8% and 0.1% of GDP.