PARIS (MNI) – After the approval of the EU fiscal stabilization
plan, all governments will have to adjust their budgets, French Finance
Minister Christine Lagarde said in an interview published Tuesday.
“All member states must restore balance in their public finances,
while at the same time pursuing reforms and investing in sunrise
strategies in order to return to significant levels of structural
growth,” Lagarde told the French business daily Les Echos.
“France will stick to its commitment to reduce its public deficit
to 6% of GDP in 2011 and to 3% in 2013,” she pledged.
The conditions for financial support via the new stabilization fund
will be “very strict” — equivalent to those imposed on Greece if the
situation is comparable, the minister said. “However, Greece is really
an exceptional case, since it is the only [country] which manipulated
its accounts.”
France’s contribution to the stabilization fund will be around E90
billion, Lagarde estimated. But there will be no “direct impact” on the
government deficit nor its debt in Maastricht terms, “since this is a
guarantee that would be activated only in case of default” of a member
state, she explained.
–Paris newsroom +331 4271 5540; Email: stephen@marketnews.com
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