Five countries of the Eurozone - Belgium, Spain, France, Italy and Portugal - have justified their economic and budgetary decisions in written responses to letters from the European Commission requesting clarifications ahead of the definitive adoption of their draft budgets for 2018 (see EUROPE 11893).
Italy. The European Commission puts at 0.2% of Italian GDP the structural budgetary effort (not including cyclical effects) of the Italian authorities for 2018, which is below the figure of...