Communication from the Commission. Assessment of action taken by Spain, France, Malta, The Netherlands and Slovenia in response to the Council Recommendations of 21 June 2013 with a view to bringing an end to the situation of excessive government deficit, and by Belgium in response to the Council Decision to give notice of 21 June 2013

On 21 June 2013, following the publication of the Commission 2013 Spring Forecast and assessments by the Commission of Member States' Stability and Convergence Programmes, the Council decided that a number of steps under the excessive deficit procedure were required for Belgium, Spain, France, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal and Slovenia.

In particular, the Council reviewed the existing excessive deficit situation of Spain, France, the Netherlands, Portugal and Slovenia. It considered that these Member States had taken effective action in compliance with Council recommendations, and that unexpected adverse economic events with major unfavourable consequences for government finances had occurred after the adoption of the original recommendations. Therefore, the Council considered that for these Member States, the conditions were fulfilled to issue new recommendations.

The Council extended the existing deadlines for correcting the excessive deficit to 2014 for the Netherlands, to 2015 for France, Portugal and Slovenia and to 2016 for Spain. The Council established a deadline of 1 October for these countries to take effective action and, (with the exception of Portugal) to report in detail the consolidation strategy that is envisaged to achieve the targets.

Moreover, the Council decided that Belgium had not taken effective action in compliance with the Council Recommendation of 2 December 2009 to correct its excessive deficit by 2012, and to give notice to put an end to the excessive deficit situation by 2013. Belgium was given a deadline of 15 September to report on the measures taken to comply with this decision.

Finally, the Council decided to open a new excessive deficit procedure for Malta and issued a recommendation to the country, with a view to end the excessive deficit situation by 2014. The Council established a deadline of 1 October for Malta to take effective action and to report in detail the consolidation strategy that is envisaged to achieve the targets.

• Primary Source

EUR-Lex: COM(2013)901: Follow the progress of this communication through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2013:901:FIN

---