Vienna, 09/01/2006 (Agence Europe) - The Austrian Presidency wants the European Commission to provide the ECOFIN Council with very detailed recommendations on the implementation by Member States of their national reform programmes under the revised Lisbon Strategy, explained Austrian finance minister and President of the ECOFIN Council, Karl-Heinz Grasser, at a meeting with European reporters in Vienna on 8 January. He said: 'We are asking the Commission to give us recommendations which are broken down to detail in the sense that I don't want to have an abstract recommendation talking about macroeconomic things. I want tailor-made recommendations.' He added that the recommendations should be accompanied by a precise timetable to make it easier to check whether a Member State 'has delivered or not'.
Grasser said that the current period of economic growth in the EU should enable Member States to make extra efforts to consolidate their budgets and by 2010, he said it should be possible to reach a balanced budget in the EU on average. The current average is 2.9% in the eurozone and 2.7% in the EU25 (see EUROPE 9070). Asked about the budget situation in Germany, Grasser said he was highly optimistic about Angela Merkel's government's ability to bring the deficit back below the 3% GDP mark very rapidly. The Commission is expected to decide in January on the excess budget proceedings to be launched against Germany. In its autumn forecasts, it estimated the German budget deficit at 3.9% GDP in 2005, 3.7% in 2006 and 3.3% in 2007.