France is at risk of flouting the European Union’s fiscal guidance while Germany and Italy are deemed not fully compliant, according to people familiar with the matter.
The watch list of countries — scheduled for release on Tuesday — forms part of the European Commission’s opinion on the national budgets for 2024.
Belgium, Finland and Croatia also threaten to breach the budgetary targets, according to the people, who declined to be identified because the report is confidential. Austria, Latvia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Slovakia are in the same group as the region’s biggest economy, they said.
The verdict might still change before it’s adopted by the commission.
The EU’s assessment comes after a pandemic-induced suspension of the fiscal regime which limited deficits to 3% of gross domestic product. The hiatus also gave the EU a chance to reflect on a potential revamp of the entire budget rulebook that binds the euro zone’s eclectic economies — known as the Stability and Growth Pact.
While there’s general agreement that the SGP framework is in need of a root-and-branch overhaul, governments with competing strategic visions are struggling to agree on how exactly to go about it. If no decision is reached by the end of the year, old rules kick back in.
Being on the EU’s watch list doesn’t have automatic reprecussions. The commission must decide at a later stage whether to trigger the so-called excessive deficit procedure if a country failed to take sufficient efforts to correct the risk of non-compliance, which could eventually lead to financial penalties.
