The European Commission issued formal warnings to seven member states for violating the bloc’s budget rules on Wednesday (19 June), piling pressure on some of the bloc’s largest economies to cut public spending, but spared Estonia thanks to its high levels of defence investment.
The EU executive announced that so-called “excessive deficit procedures” (EDP) will be initiated against Belgium, France, Italy, Hungary, Malta, Poland, and Slovakia, whose deficits exceeded the bloc’s fiscal limit of 3% of annual GDP in 2023.
Romania, which is expected to run the bloc’s largest deficit…
