Stability Pact Needs Reworking, Finance Ministers Say

The finance ministers of Britain, France and Germany have called for a reform of the EU Stability and Growth Pact, according to the Financial Times. In a joint article, Gordon Brown, Nicolas Sarkozy and Hans Eichel suggested that the pact needs to consider cyclical and structural conditions in each member state as well as debt levels, pension and health funding and the need to improve public finances. The pact currently requires euro zone member states to keep their budget deficit below three percent of their country's gross domestic product. While Britain has not introduced the euro, both France and Germany have violated that rule several years in a row, but have so far evaded sanctions because EU governments decided to give them more time to fix their budget problems.