Brussels/Berlin (Reuters) – According to EU Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni, the suspension of European debt rules should end at the end of the year.
The Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner said on Monday that he does not expect anything serious to happen again that would require an extension. “We’ve already had enough extraordinary events,” added the Italian, referring to the outbreak of the Ukraine war and the Corona crisis. The debt rules were initially suspended because of the corona pandemic. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the subsequent increase in energy and food prices led to an extension until the end of 2023.
The stability pact, which is intended to secure the value of the euro, limits the debt of EU countries actually to three percent and the total debt to 60 percent of the respective economic output. However, the rules have been repeatedly violated in the past without any noticeable consequences. The EU Commission is working on a reform, which is proving difficult. Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner recently said that he did not yet see any compromises in the proposed reform of European debt rules.
Slow progress on revising EU debt rules had sparked speculation that the suspension could be extended. However, Gentiloni said that the clause suspending the rules at the end of the year could “reasonably” be deleted.
(Report by Jan Strupczewski, Reinhard Becker, edited by Kerstin Dörr. If you have any questions, please contact our editorial team at [email protected] (for politics and the economy) or [email protected] (for companies and markets ).)