1 Economic policy coordination
| (a)
(32036)
14498/10
COM(10) 524
(b)
(32043)
14497/10
COM(10) 523
(c)
(32044)
14496/10
COM(10) 522
(d)
(32047)
14520/10
COM(10) 526
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Draft Regulation on the effective enforcement of budgetary surveillance in the euro area
Draft Council Directive on requirements for budgetary frameworks of the Member States
Draft Council regulation (EU) No …/… amending Regulation (EC) No 1467/97 on speeding up and clarifying the implementation of the excessive deficit procedure
Draft Regulation amending Regulation (EC) No 1466/97 on the strengthening of the surveillance of budgetary positions and the surveillance and coordination of economic policies
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| Legal base | (a) Articles 121(6) and 136 TFEU; co-decision; QMV
(b) and (c) Article 126(14) TFEU; consultation; unanimity
(d) Article 121(6) TFEU; co-decision; QMV
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| Documents originated | 29 September 2010
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| Deposited in Parliament | (a)-(c) 11 October 2010
(d) 12 October 2010
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| Department | HM Treasury
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| Basis of consideration | EM of 25 October 2010
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| Previous Committee Report | None
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| To be discussed in Council | Not known
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| Committee's assessment | Politically important
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| Committee's decision | For debate on the Floor of the House, together with two Commission Communications, already recommended for debate,[1] and two other legislative proposals dealt with in a separate chapter of this Report[2]
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Background
1.1 Two elements of the EU's common economic policies are the
Economic and Monetary Union, with the eventual aim that all Member
States would adopt the euro,[3]
and the processes for economic policy coordination under the "Europe
2020" strategy.[4]
A third element is the Stability and Growth Pact.
1.2 The Stability and Growth Pact, adopted by the
Amsterdam European Council in June 1997, emphasised the obligation
of Member States to avoid excessive government deficits, defined
as the ratio of a planned or actual deficit to gross domestic
product (GDP) at market prices in excess of a "reference
value" of 3%.[5] Each
year the Council of Economic and Finance Ministers (ECOFIN) issues
an Opinion on the updated stability or convergence programme of
each Member State.[6] These
Opinions, which are not binding on Member States, are based on
a recommendation from the Commission. The economic content of
the programmes is assessed with reference to the Commission's
current economic forecasts. If a Member State's programme is found
wanting, it may be invited by ECOFIN, in a Recommendation, to
make adjustments to its economic policies, though such Recommendations
are likewise not binding on Member States. This whole procedure
is essentially the Pact's preventative arm.
1.3 On the other hand, the Pact also endorsed a dissuasive
or corrective arm involving action in cases of an excessive government
deficit — the excessive deficit procedure provided for in
Article 126 TFEU (formerly Article 104 EC) and the relevant Protocol.
This procedure consists of Commission reports followed by a stepped
series of Council Recommendations (the final two steps do not
apply to non-members of the eurozone). Failure to comply with
the final stage of Recommendations allows ECOFIN to require publication
of additional information by the Member State concerned before
issuing bonds and securities, to invite the European Investment
Bank to reconsider its lending policy for the Member State concerned,
to require a non-interest-bearing deposit from the Member State
concerned whilst its deficit remains uncorrected, or to impose
appropriate fines on the Member State concerned.
1.4 In response to the current economic problems
the EU has adopted a number of measures including the European
Economic Recovery Plan of 2008 for fiscal stimulus[7]
and the May 2010 package of a European Financial Stabilisation
Mechanism which allows EU financial assistance to be granted to
a Member State facing "severe difficulties caused by natural
disasters or exceptional occurrences beyond its control"
and a Special Purpose Vehicle for a voluntary intergovernmental
agreement of eurozone Member States for mutual financial support,
the European Financial Stabilisation Facility.[8]
Such measures have been adopted whilst there has been a parallel
discussion of the perception that the EU's economic policy framework
has been tested by the global economic crisis, that the EU does
not have a mechanism to provide crisis support to its Member States,
particularly in the eurozone, and that ex ante budgetary
surveillance of some countries had not always been sufficiently
robust.
1.5 In May and June 2010 the Commission published
two Communications: Reinforcing economic policy coordination
and Enhancing economic policy coordination for stability, growth
and jobs: tools for stronger EU economic governance —
we have recommended these documents for debate on the Floor of
the House.[9] The June
2010 European Council reiterated Heads of Government agreement
on the need to address some of the issues related to economic
governance.[10]
The documents
1.6 These three draft Regulations and the draft Directive
carry forward some of the proposals from the Commission's Communications.
They are intended to improve economic governance within the EU
and to ensure that Member States abide by the terms of the Stability
and Growth Pact. Two of the draft Regulations, documents (c) and
(d), are amendments to existing secondary legislation on the Pact's
preventative arm and excessive deficit procedure. The draft Regulation,
document (a) would create a new series of sanctions for eurozone
Member States and the draft Directive, document (b) would create
minimum standards for domestic fiscal frameworks.
1.7 The draft Regulation to amend Regulation (EC)
No 1466/97 on surveillance of budgetary positions and economic
policies, document (d), concerns the preventative arm of the Stability
and Growth Pact, which requires Member States to submit annual
stability or convergence programmes with details of how they plan
to achieve agreed medium-term fiscal policy objectives. The amendments
would reinforce the role of these objectives and allow the Council
to assess whether countries are making sufficient economic adjustment
to achieve these. The draft Regulation provides that:
- an indicative annual pace of
0.5% of GDP would be the benchmark against which Member States'
progress towards their objectives would be judged;
- all Member States' expenditure would be monitored
by the Council in order to judge whether they are running prudent
fiscal policies;
- countries that had reached their medium term
budgetary objective would be required to show that their annual
expenditure growth did not go beyond a prudent medium term rate
of GDP growth, unless they also had revenue items that offset
the extra growth;
- for countries that had not yet achieved their
medium term budgetary objective, annual expenditure growth would
have to be kept below their medium-term GDP growth rate, unless
there were revenue items to offset extra expenditure;
- the effects of a general economic downturn could
be allowed for, if it meant that Member States were forced to
depart temporarily from their normal adjustment path towards the
medium term budgetary objective;
- Member States that had moved from an unfunded
to a fully funded pension scheme would be given credit for this
by being allowed to deviate from the adjustment path or their
medium term budgetary objective, as long as it was clear that
the deviation had arisen solely because of the costs of making
these reforms and remained a temporary deviation;
- there should be an appropriate safety margin
to ensure that the cost of the pension reform did not push the
Member State into excessive deficit;
- where a Member State was not judged to be running
prudent fiscal policies, the Council could invite the country
to make adjustments to its programme in order to achieve its medium
term objective;
- more serious deviations from the adjustment path
that had had an impact on the government balance of 0.5% of GDP
in one year or 0.25% of GDP or more averaged over two years could
lead to the Council making a formal recommendation to the Member
State to change its policies so that it could return to its adjustment
path, particularly if such deviations were persistent or serious;
- if a Member State had, however, already achieved
and done better than its medium term budgetary objective, the
Council would not need to take action if it then deviated from
the adjustment path; and
- the timing of submission of stability and convergence
programmes, presently submitted in the autumn, would with the
advent of the "EU Semester", be altered to require submission
in April, to coincide with submission of Member States' National
Reform Programmes.
1.8 The recitals to the draft Regulation indicate
that there should be an extra enforcement mechanism for eurozone
Member States that have consistently deviated from their normal
adjustment path without good reason — that is the measures
proposed in the draft Regulation create a new series of sanctions
for eurozone Member States, document (a).
1.9 The draft Regulation to amend Regulation (EC)
No 1467/97, document (c), concerns the excessive deficit procedure,
the process by which the Council monitors Member States running
deficits above 3% of GDP or debt ratios of more than 60% of GDP.
The amendments are intended to speed up the stages of the excessive
deficit procedure so that the Council could take swift action
to monitor excessive deficits, and issue sanctions faster in the
case of non compliance with recommendations. The draft Regulation
provides that:
- all Member States would have
a deadline of six months to take effective action to reduce their
debts and deficits once they were in the excessive deficit procedure;
- excessive deficits should normally be corrected
within twelve months;
- Council recommendations to Member States in the
excessive deficit procedure should require Member States to meet
annual budgetary targets that would improve their cyclically adjusted
balance by a minimum of 0.5% of GDP, so that they would be on
course to meet the deadline for correction of the excessive debt
or deficit;
- revised recommendations could be issued to Member
States if they had taken effective action, but their finances
had suffered significant adverse effects as a result of events
beyond the Government's direct control, such as a major economic
downturn;
- in such circumstances, the deadline for correction
of the excessive deficit could be extended by up to twelve months;
- the Council would have to issue a warning under
Article 126 (9) TFEU to eurozone Member States that were breaching
their excessive deficit procedure recommendations within two months
of the Council decision that the Member State had not taken adequate
action to reduce its debt and/or deficit;
- the warning would set a new deadline by which
the Member State would have to take effective action and would
request that the Member State improved its cyclically adjusted
balance by a minimum of 0.5% of GDP per annum;
- the Council warning would set out the policy
measures that would help the Member State to achieve this;
- if the eurozone Member State subsequently failed
to act on the warnings, the Council would have to impose sanctions
on the Member State within four months of the warning;
- subsequent rounds of more intensive sanctions
could be imposed for further non-compliance with the Council's
recommendations;
- there would be greater emphasis on the 60% debt
criterion of the Stability and Growth Pact — presently,
although the Treaty gives equal weight to the debt and the deficit
criteria, Member States have only entered excessive deficit procedure
as a result of their deficits exceeding the 3% threshold;
- there would be a benchmark for assessing whether
a Member State's debt was diminishing towards the 60% threshold
at an adequate pace;
- this benchmark would require countries to reduce
the degree to which their actual debt level exceeds the 60% threshold,
over the previous three years, at a rate of one-twentieth per
year;
- because of the economic downturn and the fact
that many Member States are currently running debt levels above
60% of GDP, there would be a three year transition period once
the revised Regulation entered into force, so as to ensure that
the effects of the recent crisis are taken into account when assessing
a Member State's debt levels and whether or not it should be put
into excessive deficit procedure on this basis;
- there would be some flexibility for Member States
that had implemented pension reforms to put their pensions on
a fully funded basis;
- if Member States were running high debts or deficits
above the Treaty reference values as a result of the costs of
these reforms, and as long as the deficit remained close to the
reference value if the debt criterion had been breached, the Commission
and Council could take the pension reform into consideration when
deciding whether to put the Member State into the excessive deficit
procedure (or deciding whether the excessive deficit procedure
could be abrogated); and
- once the revised Regulation entered into force,
there would be a five year period within which the cost of any
pension reforms made by a Member State (regardless of when those
reforms were made) would be taken into consideration when the
Council assesses the debt levels of that Member State.
1.10 The draft Regulation sets out the process by
which sanctions would be applied to eurozone countries. Sanctions
for these Member States have always existed under Article 126(11)
TFEU, but have never previously been defined, beyond the indication
that they should be of an appropriate size and proportionate to
the Member State's GDP. The draft Regulation provides that:
- there would be a fixed fine
of 0.2% of the Member State's GDP, plus a variable element;
- if the breach had occurred because of a high
deficit, the variable element would be calculated as 10% of the
difference between the Member State's actual deficit as a percentage
of GDP in the previous year and the 3% Treaty reference value;
- if the breach had occurred because of high debts
above the 60% Treaty reference value, the variable component would
be calculated as 10% of the difference between the actual deficit
as a percentage of GDP in the previous year and the general government
balance as a percentage of GDP that ought to have been achieved
if the Member State had followed the terms of the warning issued
under Article 126(9);
- subsequent sanctions for repeated non compliance
with recommendations would be calculated on the basis of the variable
component only;
- individual fines would be capped at 0.5% of GDP;
and
- whilst a Member State remained in the excessive
deficit procedure the Council would have to review its progress
every year to decide whether it was taking effective action or
whether further sanctions should be imposed.
1.11 The draft Regulation on the effective enforcement
of budgetary surveillance in the eurozone, document (a), would
establish a process by which sanctions would be applied to eurozone
Member States and would allow sanctions to be applied to these
countries in both the preventative arm of the Stability and Growth
Pact, that is, on the basis of assessments of a Member State's
stability programme, and the corrective arm — the excessive
deficit procedure. The draft Regulation provides that:
- only eurozone Member States
would vote on any of the decisions to impose sanctions or fines,
with the vote of the Member State concerned not taken into account;
- if a Member State did not achieve or make adequate
progress towards its medium-term budgetary objectives and this
deviation was serious or there were several deviations from this
path, the Member State would have to pay a deposit to the EU of
0.2% of their GDP in the previous year;
- the Council would take the decision to impose
the deposit on the Member State by "reverse qualified majority"
— that is there would have to be a qualified majority of
Member States opposing the imposition of this deposit, otherwise
it would be imposed automatically within ten days of a Commission
proposal;
- the Member State would receive interest on this
deposit at a rate to be determined, depending on the term of investment
and the Commission's credit rating;
- in exceptional circumstances, the Member State
could make a formal request to the Commission for this deposit
to be waived or for the amount to be reduced, which the Commission
and Council would consider;
- once the Member State had taken corrective policy
action to return to the adjustment path towards its medium term
budgetary objectives, the deposit and any interest would be returned
to the Member State in full;
- if the Member State subsequently entered the
excessive deficit procedure, the Member State would have to make
a deposit of 0.2% of its GDP in the previous year;
- the Council would impose this on the Member State,
acting by reverse qualified majority;
- this deposit would not bear interest;
- if the Member State had already placed an interest
bearing deposit with the EU under the preventative arm of the
Stability and Growth Pact, it would be converted into a non-interest-bearing
deposit;
- if this were smaller than the amount of the previous
interest bearing deposit, the extra amount would be returned to
the Member State;
- if the non-interest-bearing deposit were larger
than the previous interest bearing deposit, then the Member State
would have to supplement it by the necessary amount when it entered
the excessive deficit procedure;
- reduction or cancellation of this deposit would
be allowed if there were exceptional economic circumstances or
if the Member State was able to make a convincing case to Commission
and Council for such a waiver or reduction;
- once the Council had decided that the Member
State could leave the excessive deficit procedure, any outstanding
non-interest-bearing deposits lodged with the EU would be returned
to the Member State;
- the Member State would continue to be monitored
under the excessive deficit procedure as normal;
- if Council decided that the Member State had
failed to act on its excessive deficit procedure recommendations,
it would impose a fine on the Member State, acting by reverse
qualified majority;
- the fine would be set at 0.2% of the Member State's
GDP in the previous year;
- any non-interest-bearing deposit that the Member
State had already paid would be converted into a fine;
- if the fine were larger than the deposit, the
Member State would have to make up the excess;
- if the fine were smaller, the extra amount would
be returned to the Member State; and
- the Commission and Council could decide to cancel
or reduce the amount of the fine in exceptional economic circumstances
or on the basis of a request by the Member State.
1.12 The draft Regulation does not contain detailed
explanations of exactly how Member States would pay these deposits
to the EU nor where this money would be held. However, it indicates
that:
- the Commission would count
income from fines and the interest earned by the EU on deposits
that do not bear interest to the Member State as "other revenue"
under the EU Budget; and
- this money would be distributed amongst eurozone
countries that were not in the excessive deficit procedure and
did not have excessive macroeconomic imbalances.
1.13 The draft Council Directive on requirements
for Member States' budgetary frameworks, document (b) proposes
a series of minimum standards for Member States' domestic budgetary
frameworks, which would need to be adopted by 31 December 2013
at the latest. The proposal provides that:
- Member States would have to
have public accounting systems that met all the terms of Regulation
(EC) No 2223/96 (commonly referred to as the ESA 95 standards);[11]
- Member States would have to publish monthly cash-based
fiscal data and a table comparing cash-based and ESA-based data;
- in countries where a great deal of expenditure
is delegated to regional or sub- regional bodies, governments
would have to take steps to ensure that all sub sectors of government
operated under the same accounting rules and published the same
standard of data as the central finance ministry and, where relevant,
published data at the same frequency;
- any budgetary responsibilities of public authorities
would have to be set out clearly in order to enhance the transparency
and accountability of the whole system;
- such bodies would have to take steps to ensure
compliance with the same numerical fiscal rules as the central
government;
- Member States would have to ensure that their
fiscal planning was done on the basis of credible macroeconomic
and budgetary forecasts, working on the most probable or even
more cautious scenarios that highlighted possible deviation from
the most likely macro-fiscal scenario;
- Member States would be required to explain any
divergence between the macro-fiscal scenario that underpinned
their own forecasts and fiscal plans and the Commission's forecasts
for that country;
- Member States would be required to prepare alternative
macroeconomic scenarios based on previous experience of fiscal
outturns relative to forecasts, in order to show what their fiscal
position could be under different economic circumstances;
- Member States would have to prepare multiannual
budgetary frameworks, that is showing future fiscal projections
over a number of years, rather than over a twelve month period
only;
- the budgetary framework would have to contain
clear budgetary objectives expressed in terms of government deficit
and debt and clear forward projections of major expenditure and
revenue based on current fiscal policies;
- it would need to explain how the government's
fiscal plans would make progress towards the Member State's medium-term
budgetary objective relative to the same projections made on the
basis of current fiscal policies;
- Member States would be required to have numerical
fiscal rules that increased compliance with the Treaty reference
values of 3% deficit and 60% debt;
- such numerical rules would have to be reflected
in annual budgets and to contain a number of design features,
including regular monitoring of compliance with the rules, such
as by independent national institutions;
- there would need to be within the rules consequences
in case of non-compliance and escape clauses to allow for Member
States to deviate from them in exceptional circumstances;
- Member States would have to publish detailed
information on contingent liabilities with potentially significant
impact on public budgets, making sure that this information covered
all sub sectors of government; and
- they would have to publish information on the
impact of tax expenditure on revenue.
The Government's view
1.14 In relation to subsidiarity the Financial Secretary
to the Treasury (Mr Mark Hoban) says that the Government believes
that the Commission is justified in proposing the amending legislation
on the Stability and Growth Pact, documents (c) and (d), and the
legislation to create sanctions for euro area countries, document
(a). But he continues that consistency with the principle of subsidiarity
has yet to be established in relation to the proposal to create
EU minimum standards for domestic fiscal frameworks, document
(b), and says that the Government will provide us with an update
on its position in due course.
1.15 Turning to the policy implications the Minister
first tells us that the Government supports the aims of these
proposals to strengthen the SGP and to improve fiscal and macroeconomic
surveillance within the EU and can agree with the Commission's
view that the Stability and Growth Pact should be more rigorously
enforced in future, particularly for eurozone Member States. He
comments that:
- as economic coordination between
Member States helps to foster greater economic stability, particularly
between eurozone countries, it is right that ECOFIN should spend
more time assessing the content of Member States' stability and
convergence programmes;
- prior to the economic crisis the Stability and
Growth Pact was not always rigorously enforced and countries were
allowed to stray from their fiscal targets without facing penalties;
and
- this has undermined the credibility of the Pact
as a mechanism for preventing Member States from running unsustainable
fiscal policies.
1.16 The Minister then tells us that the Government
supports the proposals, in documents (a) and (c), to make more
frequent use of sanctions in future for eurozone Member States
in the excessive deficit procedure and to make application of
sanctions more automatic, particularly in cases where these countries
have breached their excessive deficit procedure recommendations.
But he adds that the Government feels strongly that this process
should not become fully automatic, as that could excessively diminish
the Council's role — it should retain a role in launching
the excessive deficit procedure and taking major decisions related
to the treatment of Member States.
1.17 The Minister emphasises that, from a legislative
and a policy perspective, the UK has a different relationship
to the Stability and Growth Pact from all other Member States
by virtue of the opt-out from euro membership and Protocol 15
to the TFEU. He reminds us that this Protocol makes it clear that
the UK only has to 'endeavour to avoid' excessive deficits, whereas
under Article 126 TFEU all other Member States 'shall avoid' excessive
deficits. He observes that, because of these provisions and because
the UK is not in the eurozone, the sanctions proposed within the
draft Regulation on budgetary surveillance and the draft amending
Regulations on the Stability and Growth Pact and excessive deficit
procedure, documents (a), (c) and (d), would not apply to the
UK.
1.18 Turning to the Treaty value of 60% of GDP for
public debt the Minister says that the Government supports the
greater focus on such debt within the framework of the Stability
and Growth Pact, as well as the proposal to build in a transition
period, so that the effects of the recent economic downturn on
Member States' debt levels can be appropriately taken into account.
He comments that:
- these proposals would strengthen
the application of the excessive deficit procedure, putting Member
States into the procedure if they had debt to GDP ratios above
60% and not declining;
- the Government believes, however, that setting
a numerical pace to assess whether Member States were reducing
their debt levels at an appropriate speed could be too prescriptive,
depending on how it is enforced;
- debt dynamics are complex and debt has many drivers
— so the Council must retain discretion when judging whether
debt is falling at an appropriate speed;
- the Government continues to believe that the
main consideration should be whether a Member State's debt is
on a downward trajectory, rather than the specific pace of annual
debt reduction; and
- it will seek amendments to these proposals, when
the Council negotiations begin this autumn, so that the numerical
pace remains only as an indicative benchmark for debt reduction
and so that it is not used as a concrete rule by which Member
States' debt reduction plans are judged.
1.19 Turning to the draft Council Directive on requirements
for Member States' budgetary frameworks, document (b), the Minister
tells us that the Government agrees that there may be some benefit
in reinforcing domestic fiscal frameworks to improve the transparency
and reliability of national accounting, statistical and fiscal
data. He says that:
- measures to improve the quality
of national statistics and the independence of national statistical
authorities are particularly welcome, in light of the statistical
problems that were uncovered in Greece earlier this year;
- the UK already has a high quality and robust
national fiscal framework, with independent statistical and fiscal
authorities in place — so these elements of the proposals
should have little impact on the UK;
- the Government supports the requirement for all
Member States to adopt multiannual budgetary frameworks, to ensure
that economic and fiscal projections are shown over a number of
years rather than just over a one year horizon; and
- the UK Budget is already set on a multiannual
basis, containing economic and fiscal projections over a five
year period, which clearly demonstrates the medium-term impact
of announced policies on the UK's fiscal position.
But the Minister continues that:
- the Government remains concerned
that the Commission has proposed legislation on minimum standards
for domestic fiscal frameworks;
- construction and operation of Member States'
national fiscal frameworks should be a matter for national governments
to decide;
- the Government does not support, in particular,
the proposed legislative requirements that specify the design
of Member States' domestic fiscal rules;
- countries must have the discretion to determine
their fiscal policies based on national circumstances; and
- this principle will guide the Government in its
negotiations.
Conclusion
1.20 These legislative proposals are an important
step in developing coordination of economic policy at EU level.
As such we recommend that they be debated on the Floor of the
House, together with the Commission Communications Reinforcing
economic policy coordination and Enhancing economic policy
coordination for stability, growth and jobs: tools for stronger
EU economic governance which we have already recommended for
debate and two related proposals which we are recommending for
debate in another chapter of this Report.[12]
And given the importance and breadth of the subject matter, the
debate ought to be for three hours.
1.21 In debating these four documents Members
could examine particularly the Government's points about:
- the automaticity of the
proposals for sanctions in documents (a) and (c);
- the preference for a numerical pace for debt
reduction to be an indicative benchmark rather than a concrete
rule;
- the subsidiarity issue in relation to the
draft Directive (b); and
- the proposals in that draft Directive for
minimum standards for domestic fiscal frameworks.
On the subsidiarity question we hope that the
Government will have updated its view in time for the debate.
1 (31618) 9433/10 and (31776) 11807/10: see HC 428-i
(2010-11), chapter 8 (8 September 2010). Back
2
(32045) 14512/10 and (32046) 14515/10: see chapter 2 of
this Report. Back
3
At present 16 Member States (Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Germany,
Greece, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, the
Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain) have adopted
the euro. Back
4
See (31373) 7110/10: HC 5-xiv (2009-10), chapter 1 (17 March 2010)
and Gen Co Debs, European Committee B, 22 March 2010, cols
3-28. Back
5
This obligation does not apply to Member States, including the
UK, whilst they remain outside the eurozone, but they are required
to endeavour to avoid excessive deficits. Back
6
The Member States that have adopted the euro have Stability Programmes,
whereas the other 11 Member States (including the UK) produce
Convergence Programmes. Back
7
See (30213) 16097/08: HC 19-i (2008-09), chapter 4 (10 December
2008) and HC Deb, 20 January 2009, cols 626-653. Back
8
See (31611) 9606/10 (31796) 12119/10: HC 428-i (2010-11), chapter
7 (8 September 2010). Back
9
See (31618) 9433/10 and (31776) 11807/10: HC 428-i (2010-11),
chapter 8 (8 September 2010). Back
10
See http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/en/ec/115346.pdf.
Back
11
See http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/esa95_supply_use_input_tables/introduction.
Back
12
See chapter 2. Back
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