Yet another crack in the Euro-dam --or is it just the old one widening?
Greece sails past EU target on deficit
By Graham Bowley International Herald Tribune
Saturday, March 19, 2005
Berlusconi bristles at idea that Italy might miss mark, too
Greece recorded a budget deficit of 6.1 percent of gross domestic product in 2004, official figures showed Friday, the biggest deficit in percentage terms of a European Union country since the introduction of the single currency in 1999.
The Italian deficits in 2003 and 2004 could also be revised above the 3 percent limit of the battered EU Stability and Growth Pact, according to Eurostat, the EU statistics agency.
The overshoots come before what is likely to be a fractious meeting of European governments in Brussels on Sunday, when finance ministers will try to agree to rework the pact amid widespread flouting of the rules by several EU countries.
The doubt cast on Italy's economy drew a blistering response from Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's prime minister, who has been among the vanguard of EU nations seeking to relax the rules.
Berlusconi said he would contest Eurostat's figures.
"We're pretty tired of all this bureaucracy," Berlusconi said in Rome, Reuters reported. "We are really determined to do battle over this because Europe's job should not be to create difficulties for member states, but precisely the opposite."
The pact's rules were put in place at the end of the last decade, largely at Germany's insistence.
They were meant to underpin public confidence in Europe's fledgling currency by restricting countries' freedom to run up large budget deficits. Germans were afraid that traditionally high-spending countries like Italy or Greece would undermine the stability they enjoyed under the Deutsche mark.
But Germany, which has broken the 3 percent cap outlined in the pact for the past three years, is now leading a group of countries, including France, to weaken the rules by introducing a list of mitigating factors that would allow a country to escape punishment.
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