Brussels, 27/05/2004 (Agence Europe) - According to Thursday's edition of the German daily, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Austrian finance minister, Karl-Heinz Grasser, is seeking tougher rules for the stability and growth pact. Sanctions proposed include temporarily withdrawing voting rights from Member States in the European Union whose public deficits go above the 3% of GDP reference value for a sustained period.
The European Commission has welcomed this "commitment from ministers" of the EU in the debate on improving economic governance and underlined that this case is on the agenda for the Luxembourg presidency's work (beginning on 1 January 2005). Spokes-person for Commissioner Joaquin Almunia pointed out that the Commission has been working since November 2002 for improving economic governance and the implementation of the pact and added that proposals would soon be presented in this connection.
In a column of the Financial Times, German, British, and French finance ministers appealed on 21 May for the taking into account of the debt and the economic cycle of each country in the application of the pact. Ministers of the three main economic powers of the European Union stated that by assessing the public finances of each country would meant that they also had to take into account structural and cyclic conditions for them to focus on in the long term such as the level of debt; sustainable funding of pensions and health care and improvement of public finances.