Brussels, 07/12/2004 (Agence Europe) - As anticipated, Tuesday's Ecofin Council adopted conclusions on accountability in the case of the Greek budgetary data on its public deficit, and took note of the infringement proceedings launched by the Commission against Athens. Speaking to the press, Gerrit Zalm welcomed the end of this "soap opera", ending with confirmed and valid figures. Although they congratulated Greece on its "close collaboration with Eurostat", the ministers expressed concern at the extent of past revisions, "especially for the credibility of multilateral surveillance in general". On the basis of the Commission's communication (EUROPE of 3 December, p.10), the Council stressed that "the Greek statistical authorities did not send reliable information to Eurostat for a long time", and called upon them to take the consequences of this. The ministers identified another "source for serious concern", in that Eurostat had validated the Greek budgetary figures for 2000, which was the reference year for the adoption of the euro, "in spite of serious issues". Thirdly, the conclusions show that "the convergence reports by the Commission and the ECB failed to point out the potential problems to the Council", and recognise that "the Economic and Financial Committee and the Council could have paid more attention to the data submitted by each government". At a press conference, the Greek minister George Alogoskoufis repeated his intention to bring the deficit below 3% next year. However, he acknowledged that "the Commission is unable to confirm that this will happen", and that it thinks it is more likely "to need another year".