Juncker May Scrap Euro Pact Reform

by Ulrika Lomas, for LawAndTax-News.com, Brussels

10 March 2005

Despite scheduling a last ditch meeting to discuss the reform of the Stability and Growth Pact on March 20, Luxembourg's Prime Minister and head of the EU Presidency, Jean-Claude Juncker has hinted that attempts to make the Pact more flexible may be abandoned altogether.

Speaking to reporters following the conclusion this week of the failed talks with eurozone finance ministers on the issue, Mr Juncker revealed that:

"I am now beginning to seriously consider the option of not changing the pact at all. We are not excluding the scenario of leaving the pact as it is. That is now a distinct possibility."

He went on to explain that although the agreement, which governs the economies of the twelve eurozone members "is not working very well", he would not be prepared "to sign up to a solution which boils down to an equally poorly functioning pact later on".

According to reports, the Presidency head then went launched a barely concealed attack on Germany, which was unhappy with the compromise proposal that he put forward despite a number of concessions to its position, announcing that:

"I am not prepared to go to inordinate lengths to amend the pact. People who think I am will be severely mistaken."

"If national governments continue to believe that Europe is just another arena to express their purely national political agendas by claiming more and more undesirable flexibility, I'm not going to be used to accommodate those views and ambitions."

Recommended