Almunia beschuldigt lidstaten van boekhoudkundige trucs om tekorten op nationale begrotingen weg te poetsen (en) - Hoofdinhoud

Monetary affairs commissioner Joaquin Almunia has accused national governments of using "tricks" to artificially cut budgetary deficits, as member states try to be seen to be following the eurozone's rules.

In an interview with the Financial Times on Thursday (6 October), Joaquin Almunia claims member states use the help of commercial banks to disguise the real figures, suggesting "They (the banks) say: you can use these techniques, in order to decrease the public deficit, without cutting state spending".

He particularly referred to so-called Public-Private Partnerships (PPP), which share the financial burden of large infrastructure projects.

According to Mr Almunia, it has become increasingly difficult for the EU executive, in charge of monitoring member states' budgetary performance, to look through such tendencies and figure out the real height of the countries' deficits.

"This is a continuous task and we have to train our people to study these operations - it is a lot of effort", he said.

The commissioner stressed that Europe should avoid the situation where public accounts imitate the "creative accounting of some companies in the past".

The Commission has mainly come across problems with reliable data in Italy, Greece and Portugal.

Recent Eurostat figures revealed that ten of the 25 EU member states were in breach last year of the bloc's stability and growth pact - the rules underpinning the euro - which sets out that budget deficits may not exceed 3 percent of GDP.