BRUSSELS (MNI) – The 27 members of the European Union haven’t been
taking the bloc’s debt rules seriously enough and need to put more
emphasis on it in the future, a European Commission spokesman said on
Friday.
The comments come ahead of a meeting of European Council President
Herman Van Rompuy’s task force, which aims to increase economic
governance in the European Union to reassure worried investors that the
bloc is in control of its heavy debt burden.
“We think indeed that the debt criteria of the stability pact have
not been taken sufficiently seriously in the past,” European Commission
spokesman for Economic and Monetary Affairs, Amadeu Tardio, told
reporters in Brussels.
“This should be corrected. We are proposing ways forward in that
sense,” he said.
Current EU rules stipulate that a country’s annual government debt
should be less than 60% of its gross domestic product, but many
countries are currently in breach of that rule.
Tardio said the European Commission was participating fully as a
member of the task force and had made a comprehensive set of proposals.
“The Commission proposals are very much the basis of this
discussion at this point in time,” Tardio said.
Asked about reports that portions of some national debt could
become part of a wider EU debt with EU guarantees, Tardio said, “I am
not aware of such a proposal…the only thing that I can say is that it
doesn’t come from the Commission.”
–Brussels: 0032 487 (0) 32 803 665, echarlton@marketnews.com
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